


A Different Man

by Mireille, soft_princess



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse, Dimensional Travel, Excessive Doctor Who References, M/M, MCD occurs before story begins, Post-Episode: s07e22 Chosen, Two Xanders Are Better Than One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:47:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26959048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille, https://archiveofourown.org/users/soft_princess/pseuds/soft_princess
Summary: When Xander escapes the end of his world by crossing to another dimension, he thinks that "everyone you know is dead" is enough to deal with.It can't be that easy, though. Instead, there's this dimension's Xander, who made some very different choices; another potential apocalypse; and a living, breathing, alternate version of his dead boyfriend.Life sucks, even if it beats the alternative.
Relationships: Rupert Giles/Xander Harris, Xander Harris/Andrew Wells
Comments: 28
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

****

_"I know it’s not easy with my face looking exactly like Ricky. But I’m a different man, I’m not replacing him. But we can remember him by fighting in his name." -_ Doctor Who _, "The Age of Steel"_

****

"Willow, come on!" Xander grabbed her arm in an attempt to get her away from the door. The portal she'd opened was supposed to hold for five minutes--more like four now--but they didn't have that long. Between the fire and the structural damage, this place was going to come down around them any second.

She shook her head, pulling out of his grasp. "I have to wait for Kennedy. We'll catch up."

"Will--"

"Don't say it!" 

There'd been a time when Xander would've fully supported anyone's need to deny reality as long as possible, but right now, he was more concerned with getting out alive. There was nothing else they could do here. The demons wouldn't have left anyone alive downstairs.

"Come on," he repeated, and this time, when he pulled at her arm, she lost her grip on the door frame. He dragged her along with him toward the portal in the center of the room.

"I can't leave her," she said. "One more minute!"

"We don't have a minute." Through the doorway, he could see pieces of flaming rubble crash down as the ceiling started to collapse.

"I can't do this again," Willow whispered. If he'd had time, he would have hugged her, would have reassured her that she was strong, that she could get through this, that losing Kennedy wouldn't destroy her.

He didn't have time, and there was a part of him that was glad. "You can," he said, then, quietly, "I did."

She nodded then, slipping her hand into his. "Let's go," she said. Xander squeezed her hand, and they took a step toward the portal. 

"Willow!"

"Kennedy!" Willow shouted. Xander turned to see Kennedy staggering through the doorway, clinging to the frame to hold herself upright. "Hold on, I'm coming!"

Xander tried to pull her through the portal with him, but she yanked herself free. "We're right behind you," she said, shoving him as hard as she could. He stumbled toward the portal, unable to catch his balance before he tumbled through....

...and through....

...and through. 

It felt like he was falling forever, but then he landed, feeling the scrape of carpet against his cheek. Exhaustion and blood loss were finally catching up to him now that the adrenaline was wearing off. He didn't want to move; even opening his eyes made the room spin. 

From what he could see, the room looked familiar: dark green carpet, the bottom few inches of an old wooden desk, a bookshelf stuffed with ancient-looking volumes. Just like one of the Council offices, back before the last attack. Willow had done it.

"Willow," he gasped, rolling over despite the nausea, as though staring at the portal would make her appear through it. Instead, as he watched, the glow of the portal dimmed, then went out altogether.

Oh, God. She hadn't made it.

"I said, don't move!" someone shouted, and Xander realized that he wasn't alone in the room. "That's right. Now put your hands up," the voice said, and Xander wondered if he'd hit his head when he'd fallen through the portal, because that sounded like--

It wasn't. Even if Willow had gone over all the theoretical possibilities with him, it just wasn't. 

He put his hands up, slowly and carefully, croaking, "I'm not armed." He'd dropped his sword earlier. He'd been trying to get to the remains of the Council armory when Willow's scrying spell had convinced her that it was too late to do anything but run.

A figure came around the desk--polished shoes, creased trousers; at the Council, it could be anyone. But there was no mistaking the voice this time when he whispered, "Xander?" and then, a second later, after the beep of the intercom button, "Send help. It's Xander, and I think he's hurt."

And then the figure dropped down to its knees next to him, and Xander blinked up at a painfully familiar expression of worry.

"Andrew," Xander murmured, and was relieved when he finally passed out.

****

When Xander came to, he could hear the all too familiar noises of a hospital. At first, he thought he was home, and he expected Willow to be sitting beside his bed, fretting over him until he woke up.

"Xander? Are you awake?"

No, he wasn't home. At home, Andrew had been killed in the first wave of destruction, when the demons had hit the Council headquarters and killed everyone in it, including Giles, Andrew, and Dawn. That had been three months ago.

Xander blinked in the harsh light of the hospital room and nodded. His throat was tight, but he managed to croak, "Yeah."

Then Andrew was out of the room, calling for the doctor, and Xander could look around. It seemed like this dimension was pretty much the same as home; the hospital looked exactly like the one closest to the Council where they used to take injured Slayers. When Andrew came back, he was even wearing his favorite tie, the one with the green and red stripes. It clashed with every shirt Andrew owned, but he loved it anyway.

"Okay, I'm not going to start badgering you with questions or anything, but what the hell's going on with your eye? Last I checked, you were wearing the patch on the left," Andrew said, nervously.

"Oh, uh," Xander stuttered, reaching up to check that the patch was securely in place over his right eye. "About that, uh..."

"I mean, I guess you're like, from an alternate dimension or something?" Andrew pulled a chair closer to the bed, and sat down, looking like he always did when he had a puzzle to solve. "That's so cool."

Nothing about this was funny, but he had to laugh anyway. It was so surreal, so completely insane. "Yeah, I'm from another dimension," he finally managed to say, carefully avoiding looking at Andrew.

"Awesome," Andrew said, and if Xander had looked at him, he was sure he'd be grinning. He wasn't going to look. That wasn't Andrew, he told himself. It was Andrew from an alternate dimension, and they weren't the same person. 

"So, uh. You're going to be okay," not-Andrew said. "You lost some blood, but you're all stitched up now, and you can go home in the morning." 

Xander laughed again; even to himself, it sounded like he'd slipped over into crazy-man cackling. "Home?" he repeated. "It's gone." 

At their best estimate when Willow had started working on the portal spell, there had been less than a million people left in the world, most of them living in small, isolated communities.. Even those wouldn't have much time, as the demons finished wiping out the easier pickings and turned their attention to more difficult prey. 

"I meant... you know. You can leave here," he said. Xander realized he was waiting for him to go on; Andrew--his Andrew--wouldn't have stopped there. 

This Andrew was like the one he remembered in more than just his taste in ties, because after a second, he said, "Do you want to talk about it?" 

"No," Xander said flatly, turning his head so that all he could see was the wall.

"Well, uh, I guess that's okay, you don't have to tell me anything," Andrew said, sounding a little put out. "So I called Giles and Xander--our Xander, I mean--and they're coming home early from their trip to talk to you you," he babbled. "Xander wasn't all that happy; this is the first time they've ever had the chance to take a real vacation together. They're just in Provence, though, so they'll be able to get back by tomorrow."

Oh, okay, that might be the weirdest thing about this dimension. "Giles and--me? Him?" Whatever.

"Uh, you mean in your dimension you're not--?"

"With Giles? No way," Xander said, shaking his head. 

Okay, there'd been definite--vibes, or something--right after Sunnydale had sunk into the ground. But Andrew had been there, too, and he'd needed Xander a lot more than Giles had. Xander didn't think about it as having chosen between the two of him, but in some ways, he guessed he had, and he'd chosen Andrew.

And Andrew was--had been--everything. 

But this wasn't his Andrew. All Xander had to do was look at him to see that no, really, he wasn't the Andrew Xander knew. His Andrew hadn't looked that insecure in a couple of years.

"They've been together since after Sunnydale, you know, sunk. I guess everyone was kind of surprised, but we got used to it." Andrew shrugged. Now he didn't look just insecure, he looked crushed.

Maybe that's where this universe diverged from his, Xander thought. "When are they getting here?"

"They'll be here in the morning; Giles wants to see you tomorrow, if you're up to it. I have a key to your--to their place, so I could water the plants while they were gone, and Xander said I could get some clothes for you; your old clothes are in pretty bad shape."

Xander nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I'll be up to it." He was never going to be up to it, because Giles was dead, had been dead for months, just like Andrew. But the Giles he knew would have wanted to know what was going on, and there wasn't anyone else who could tell him. 

"Okay," Andrew said, his voice still abnormally quiet. Xander reminded himself that he didn't know what was normal, though, not for this Andrew. "Are you hungry? I know you hate--Xander hates--hospital food. I could get you something else." 

He was definitely hungry; at this point, even hospital food sounded pretty good after what he'd been eating the past few weeks. But he knew that if Andrew came back with food, he'd sit with Xander while he ate, and Xander didn't think he could stand it. "I'm fine," he said. "I'm just tired."

"I, uh, okay," Andrew said, looking down. "I guess I'll let you sleep."

"Thanks." He'd ask a nurse if she could bring him something to eat later. Right now, he just wanted to be alone.

"Well, I'll see you tomorrow morning? I can come pick you up and bring you the clothes and everything."

"That sounds good," Xander said, a bit tersely. He couldn't take this right now. He needed some time to think. Sure, Willow had told him everything that could happen, and she'd told him people who had been dead might not be anymore, but not Andrew. Xander could take anyone else being alive, but not him. He'd spent three months dealing, or not dealing, with Andrew's death and this--coupled with knowing that it wasn't the Andrew he knew--was just too hard to deal with right now.

"Okay, then, I'll--you get some rest," Andrew said. He stood up, fidgeting, and Xander kept staring at the wall. And then, finally, Andrew was gone.

Of course, once he was finally alone, Xander wished Andrew hadn't gone.

****

Xander thought, the next morning, that he was prepared. He felt physically better than he had in a while. When he'd tossed and turned, the nurse had given him something to help him sleep, so he'd had more rest than he could remember having in months, along two decent meals, and a chance to wash up. And, as he kept reminding himself, he'd dealt with a lot worse than this in the past few months.

That wasn't Andrew, he reminded himself. It was just someone who looked a lot like Andrew. It was like back in high school, when that vampire version of Willow had turned up, only not as potentially deadly. 

And that had worked, right up until Andrew had come in carrying a bag of clothes and a paper cup of coffee. He'd smiled at Xander, and for one second, Xander forgot where he was, forgot what had happened, and smiled back. 

Then he remembered again, and the smile faded.

"Black, no sugar," Andrew said, handing him the cup. "Just like you like it."

Okay, one more thing that was different. "Huh, Andrew, I don't--" he started to say, but he took a polite sip. He needed the caffeine. "Oh," he said as he tasted it. "Never mind." He had the urge to smile again.

"Gotcha," Andrew said. "Cream and three sugars. I've got clothes for you, too."

Trust Andrew to know how he took his coffee, even when it was obvious they'd never been a couple in this universe. Andrew always had the coffee maker running first thing in the morning, both at home, and at work, and he knew--used to know--how everyone they worked with liked their coffee. "Thanks," Xander said, a little bit more hoarsely than he'd hoped.

He knew he'd have to tell his story sooner or later, but he hoped Andrew wasn't in the room when he did. Telling Giles, _Giles who was supposed to be dead_ , was going to be hard enough.

"It's what I do," Andrew said, just like Xander had heard him say a hundred times before, and Xander occupied himself with drinking his coffee and pretending this was all perfectly normal. He always had coffee brought to him by someone who looked just like his dead boyfriend, right before he went out to talk to his dead boss--oh, and himself, if he was unlucky, and so far, he had no reason to think he wouldn't be--and tell him how the world had just ended. 

Just a typical Thursday. If it was even Thursday here. Though not knowing the day of the week was the least of his problems. 

He gulped down half the coffee, then set the cup down on the table. "I'm good to go," he told Andrew. "The doctor already came by. I just need some clothes." 

"Right here," Andrew said, handing over a bag. Xander opened it up, and winced. He remembered these clothes. They were some of the first things he'd bought when they left Sunnydale. That was probably why this dimension's Xander didn't mind giving them away; they were pretty ratty by now. "I'll be waiting right outside." 

When he was dressed, Xander opened the door a crack and peeked out. Andrew was standing a couple of feet from the door, facing away from it, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "I'm ready," Xander said, opening the door fully and stepping out.

It felt weird wearing clothes that he knew weren't his, and yet felt so very familiar. The well worn jeans had a hole on the inside of his left thigh, just like he remembered, and his shirt was just this side of too loose, reminding him that he'd lost weight in the last few months. But there was a stain on the shirt that he knew hadn't been on his version of this shirt.

"Okay, let's go, then!" Andrew replied, a little bit too cheerfully. They were walking out when Andrew started babbling again. "I don't want to overwhelm you or anything, but there's something I'm wondering, and it's really bugging me. Is our universe really close to yours? Like, exactly the same? Or are there subtle things that are different? Like the police uniforms," he said, pointing at an officer standing on the sidewalk.

Xander shook his head. Everything was the same as far as he could tell, except for the part where demons hadn't managed to send this universe to hell. Yet.

"You don't have zeppelins, do you? Because we don't either."

That, that made Xander stop, suddenly, in the middle of the street crossing. He jammed his hands into his pockets, closed his eye for a moment, and forced himself to keep breathing. No tears. He couldn't afford to cry.

He'd watched those Doctor Who episodes with Andrew, sitting on the couch with a blanket spread over their laps and a bowl of popcorn balanced on his knee. So damn domestic--a break from what was already becoming a desperate situation even if most people weren't even aware yet that there was something wrong. They'd rooted for Jake and Mickey and cheered when Mickey had stayed behind.

Two days later, Andrew was dead.

"Stop, please," Xander said when he finally made it to the other side of the street, ignoring the angry car horns and the worried look not-Andrew was giving him. "Just stop talking. Please."

"Are you okay?" Andrew asked, hovering at Xander's elbow. "'Zeppelin' isn't some kind of insult where you come from, or--"

"Stop," Xander said again. "You didn't do anything. And I'm fine." 

He had to be fine. He'd forced himself to be fine for three months; he could keep being fine now. Andrew was gone, and he wasn't coming back, and it turned out the last thing you wanted to do when a guy turned up with your dead boyfriend's face was go liberate Paris with him. 

"Let's just go," he said, blinking hard to make sure he had himself under control. He'd report to this dimension's Giles, he'd do whatever they needed from him to prove he was who and what he said he was, and then he'd ask for a field assignment, as far away from England as he could get. 

"Okay," Andrew replied, uncertain. "I'm sorry."

Xander shook his head. "It's okay. Don't worry about it." But it was Andrew, even if it wasn't his Andrew, and Xander knew it was impossible for him not to worry.

Surprisingly, Andrew managed to keep his mouth shut until they were in the car. The same car. With the passenger side door that locked funny, and the backseat littered with papers. Important papers, Andrew had told him once, and Xander had never had the heart to tell him that if they were that important, he probably shouldn't be leaving them in his car. "Sorry about the mess, I keep meaning to clean up--"

"But you always forget," Xander finished for him, before he could catch himself. God, this whole dimension travel thing was a nightmare.

"How'd you know?" Andrew asked, with a puzzled look and a small smile. "Am I that forgetful in your universe? I always thought I'd like to be organized, and it'd be fun if I was, you know, somewhere--"

"No, you weren't organized." Fuck, Xander needed to start thinking before he talked. 

"Were--oh." Andrew turned the key into the ignition, and just stared ahead. "I'm sorry, I'll stop talking now."

"Thank you."

Andrew did actually stop talking then, although Xander realized that was because of the completely tactless way he'd just told him what had happened in Xander's dimension. It had to be a shock to have someone tell you you were dead. 

But whatever the reason, it meant that Xander could spend the rest of the trip rehearsing what he was going to tell Giles. He wanted to be as clear as he could so that he didn't have to go over it more than once. It was going to be hard enough to tell the story the first time. 

When Andrew parked the car, he finally turned to Xander again. "Do you know the way? The office is on the third floor--" 

"Second door on the left?" 

Andrew nodded. "Okay, then. Do you want me to come with you? I'm sure I could rearrange my schedule, if--"

"No," he said, quickly, and then felt guilty at the hurt expression on Andrew's face. "Thanks," he went on, more gently. "I'm fine. I know you have a lot to do." If this Andrew was anything like his, he wasn't nearly as busy as he claimed to be, but Xander hadn't ever admitted he knew that. He definitely wasn't about to start now. 

He let himself out of the car, taking a deep breath. He could do this.

Giles was already in his office when Xander got there. The first thing he noticed was the lack of a scar on Giles' cheek; the next was the smile on his face. Xander couldn't remember the last time Giles had been genuinely pleased to see him. Probably right around the same time he got those scars, not long after they left Sunnydale. 

"Hello, Xander, please do come in," he said, sounding glad to see him, and Xander took a step back before he could stop himself. "I'm sorry," Giles said immediately. "Do I look-- different?"

Xander shook his head to clear it, and forced himself to move forward and walk into the office. "Yeah," he answered, hoarsely, because Giles did look different. Really different. He looked happy, and unscarred, and alive.

"Andrew told me what he knew of your situation, but that wasn't much," Giles said, closing the door behind Xander. "Please, sit down. Do you want anything to drink?"

If this Giles was anything like his Giles--Xander was starting to wonder about that--he'd have some strong liquor hidden somewhere in his office. "I wouldn't mind a glass of anything with alcohol in it."

Giles raised an eyebrow, but just said, "I do have some scotch, if that would be all right."

"That'll do, thanks," Xander replied. He sighed and slumped down on the chair. 

"I imagine interdimensional travel must be quite overwhelming," Giles said.

"The travel, not so much," Xander said. "It's kind of freaky, but I'm not sure if that's because of the portal, or because I fell through it." He shrugged. "It's the being here that's leaving me definitely more than whelmed." 

"I take it your dimension is quite different to this one, then?" Giles opened his desk drawer, taking out a bottle and a glass. He poured a generous portion of scotch into the glass and pushed it toward Xander. 

Huh. That was different, too; the Giles he'd known would have poured some for himself, even if it was only ten o'clock in the morning. But that had only been toward the end, Xander reminded himself, when things were going so badly that they'd have given Dawn a drink if she'd asked for one. Giles hadn't drunk that much before then. 

At least, Xander was pretty sure someone would have mentioned it if he had. 

At least, if they'd noticed. 

He took a drink before answering Giles' question; maybe the alcohol would numb him enough that he could get through this whole ordeal without feeling it. "Yes," he said finally, but then changed it to, "No. Maybe?" He shook his head. "I don't know enough about what's happened here to say for sure, but some things are completely different." 

Giles nodded, picking up a pen and pulling a notepad over to him. "Such as?" 

He didn't mean to say it. He meant to talk about the demons, but he looked over at this unscarred, smiling man, and realized that somewhere in this dimension, there was another Xander Harris--a Xander who still had friends, who was safe and well and probably even happy--and for a second, he was so stupidly, viciously jealous of these people that all he could say was, "Well, you're not dead, for one thing. In my dimension, there wasn't enough left of you to bury." 

The minute the words were out of his mouth, he regretted it, but it was too late; the damage had been done. Even in a new universe, he was good at getting Giles to hate him. 

Except that this Giles winced at the words, and then, when Xander was expecting Giles to snap at him, he said, "Oh, Xander. I am sorry. I hadn't thought about how difficult this must be for you."

And that was when Xander remembered what Andrew had said about the Xander he knew and this Rupert Giles, and shook his head. "No," he said. "I mean, yes, but not--" He shrugged again. "That's another thing that's different back home," he said. "We weren't--Giles was my friend." 

At least, Xander wanted to believe that they'd been friends again, that things were getting better between them by the end. "I miss him," he added, because he still felt guilty about just throwing the "dead" thing in Giles' face like that, and because it was safe to admit to that. He did miss Giles, not to mention Willow and Buffy and Dawn and the entire world, but that was all easier to stand than missing Andrew. Easier to talk about, too. 

Giles gave him a minute, let him take another deep drink from his glass and rub his eye and run his hands through his hair before he asked any more questions. Even then, Giles hesitated for a moment, cleaning his glasses the way he used to back in Sunnydale. Xander couldn't remember seeing Giles do that afterward, but then again, Xander hadn't spent that much time around Giles after that. 

Finally, though, it was time to get down to business. "Perhaps we should start with something a little less stressful," Giles said. "We know that time runs differently in some dimensions than it does here. What day was it when you left your home dimension?" 

"I think it was Wednesday," Xander said. "October, um, something. I lost track of the date, but it's the middle of October, 2006." 

"That seems to match up, then. It's Thursday the nineteenth today." He made a note, and Xander wondered if he really needed to write that down, or if he was just trying to give himself something to do. "How did you open a portal from your dimension to ours?"

Xander snorted. "I didn't. Willow did. It was our escape route. We thought maybe if we could get to another dimension, we could--" He sighed. "There wasn't anything left we could do in our world. There isn't much of a world left. Just a few pockets of people the demons haven't found yet."

Giles put his pen down and took off his glasses, this time pinching the bridge of his nose. "I'm sorry."

Xander gave a shrug, trying not to think about Willow or anyone else. "Not like it's your fault."

"No, I suppose not." Giles didn't say anything for about a minute; Xander could hear the clock ticking on the wall behind him. "I suppose this is how your universe diverge from ours?"

"I don't know exactly when our universes split." Xander tried to remember what Willow had told him about how diverging universes happened. Something about every decision, at least every important one, branching off? "But yeah, your world? Still standing. Mine, not so much." 

Giles rubbed his temple. "Is there any help we could provide--?"

"No," Xander said decisively. "It's gone. Everyone's dead, or they will be within a few days. The entire planet is overrun by demons." 

"We could try to go back for Willow or anyone else who was with you, at least."

He shook his head and looked down. "The building took a lot of damage in the first wave of attacks. It was collapsing around us after the demons Hulk-smashed it a second time." Willow and Kennedy had been buried in the rubble, if they were lucky. 

"I'm sorry."

Xander sighed in exasperation. "Stop saying that." His Giles had been apologizing for not being able to stop the demon incursion until he'd died. Xander was tired of hearing it. Demons had taken over his Earth, it wasn't Giles' fault--this one or his.

"There wasn't anything you could have done," he went on. "You weren't even there. And Giles--my Giles--he did everything he could, right up until the end." 

Giles sighed. "I suppose you're right." 

Xander nodded. "Anyway. The portal? Willow thought that maybe we--her, me, Kennedy, a couple of other Slayers who were with us--should try somewhere else. Go to another dimension, see if we could do any good there, since there was nothing we could do in our world." He shrugged. "We could probably have stayed alive, if that was all we'd wanted. Found an island somewhere, loaded up on canned goods. With only four or five of us there, the demons might not ever notice us." 

"But you couldn't do that," Giles said, and Xander shook his head. 

"We had to keep trying, and by the end, there was no way the demons would have left us alone. We'd been fighting back too hard. So Willow opened a portal, and I was the only one of us who made it through." He tried to make it sound matter-of-fact, like he was so used to leaving his friends to die that--

He winced, realizing that he kind of was, at this point. "So here I am," he said, before Giles could reply. "Xander Harris, reporting for duty." 

"Good Lord," Giles said, and Xander realized that Giles hadn't been expecting that. He wondered why. Was this universe's Xander not working for the Council, or was it just-- 

"We'll have to come up with an explanation," Giles went on, and Xander felt a little better. Okay. It was just the weirdness factor. Xander could understand that. "And you're not fit to go back to work right now. You need to rest, give your injuries a chance to heal, get a few square meals inside you."

Xander shook his head. Resting was the last thing he wanted to do. Resting meant having time to think, and Xander didn't want that. 

"Andrew's already offered you the spare bedroom in his flat," Giles said. "You can stay there until we get an official identity sorted out for you."

"No," Xander said. "Not Andrew. That's not going to work." He looked down at the carpet, not wanting to meet Giles' eyes, afraid of what the other man would see in his expression. 

"I think we've identified another point of divergence," Giles said. "In this dimension, Andrew threw his lot in with us a few years ago; he can take some getting used to, but he's been utterly trustworthy since coming to work for the Council. I assume that in yours, he remained, er, on the other side?" 

Xander's laughter almost felt real; the idea of him not trusting Andrew just seemed so bizarre to him, after the last few years. "No," he said, still not looking up. "Andrew worked for the Council, right up until he--" Damn it, that shouldn't be so hard to say: Andrew died. Two simple words. He could say them. 

No, he couldn't. 

"Oh," Giles said, looking down at his desk. "I suppose we could always empty out the office at home, and make some space for you."

"We?" Xander didn't like the sound of that. There was no way he was going to live with his other self, especially if that other self shared a house with Giles. Maybe Andrew's spare room would be the lesser of two evils.

"Xander and I, my--this universe version of you." Giles looked straight at him, probably trying to gauge Xander's reaction to the news.

And Xander had noticed the slip. "Not going to work either," he said, scratching his cheek. "I mean, I have no problem with you and him--me--him," he sighed. "He made a choice I didn't, but that doesn't mean it's freaking me out or anything. Well, maybe a little, but anyway, the point is, it's not the you-and-him that's a problem, it's just the him. It'd be weird."

"You need somewhere to stay," Giles said, "and until we've concocted a new identity for you, complete with identification, and come up with a good explanation for why you're virtually identical to Xander Harris--"

Virtually? Xander wondered, and then remembered that Andrew had mentioned that before: this dimension's Xander had lost the other eye. 

"--then the fewer people who know you're here, the better, I'd say. And putting you up in a hotel for more than a few nights would mean that other people would have to know, as I'd have to use Council funds." He sighed. "You're welcome to stay with us, although I admit that Xander finds the situation as awkward as you seem to."

It all made perfectly good sense. It was logical for him to stay with Andrew. The only problem was that the logical conclusion was one he wasn't sure he could cope with. Deep down, he knew that if he told Giles why he couldn't stand living in the same house as Andrew, Giles would find another solution. 

He just couldn't do it. Somehow, he couldn't shake the feeling that no one would care. In his head, he knew that hadn't been true back home. It didn't change how he'd felt, though, like he'd been the only person to even notice Andrew was gone. 

At least when Anya had died, people had had the time to tell him how sorry they were, but after the Council had been attacked, the Watchers--and sort-of Watchers, like him--who were left had spread out, supporting teams of Slayers as they'd tried to stop the invading demons. He hadn't seen Willow in nearly three months before last week, although they'd remained in contact, first by phone and email, then, when those had stopped working, by magic. 

And if the people who knew him best hadn't been able to care, he thought, a total stranger, no matter how familiar-looking he was, wasn't going to, either. Especially not this total stranger. The Giles in his dimension hadn't exactly been in favor of Xander's relationship with Andrew. 

"I understand," Xander said. "I guess Andrew's the best choice, after all, since he doesn't have to clear out a bedroom for me." At least if Andrew had a spare bedroom, it wouldn't be the same apartment--or this world's version of it--that he and Andrew had lived in back in his dimension. 

He'd do his best to avoid Andrew when they were both in the apartment. He could stay in his room with the door closed.

Not that it would stop Andrew. 

"He isn't the Andrew you knew," Giles said. "Whatever quarrel you may have had with him in the past, don't hold it against this Andrew."

Quarrel? Only if you counted whose turn it was to do the laundry, Xander thought, and felt the familiar ache in his chest when he remembered that they were never going to bicker like that again. He ran his hands through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes. He really needed to get it cut one of these days, but that had been a low priority lately. 

"I said I'd stay with Andrew, so there's no reason to keep discussing it," he said, his voice coming out hard and clipped from his efforts to keep from breaking down.

Giles nodded and didn't push the issue. "I'll give Andrew a call. And here--" He dug into his pocket. "You'll need clothes and other necessities until you're ready to work again."

Xander picked up the money Giles was handing him and nodded. "I'll pay you back."

"No worries," Giles replied. "I'll put it on my expense statement." He smiled thinly and tapped his pen on the pad of paper.

"I'll go to the mall, and--" There was one he and Andrew used to go to before things had gone to hell, when Xander was in town, and Andrew had an hour free for lunch. Xander shook his head; he needed to stop dragging everything back to Andrew. Gaze shifting to Giles, he took a deep breath. "There is a mall around here, right?"

"Yes, there's a shopping center just a few blocks down."

"Okay. Thanks," he said. He thought about settling back in his chair, talking to Giles about what had happened, how the demons had managed to come through. But for whatever reason, whatever happened in his home dimension wasn't happening here, so it could wait, he decided, until it was easier to talk about. 

It would get easier to talk about, one of these days. He was sure of it. 

Xander put the money in his pocket and got up to leave. 

"Stop by Andrew's desk on your way out," Giles suggested. "I'm sure he'll be happy to give you his spare key." 

"Yeah," Xander said, and then, feeling like he should be saying more, went with "Thanks," again.

****

Andrew had offered to go with Xander to shop for clothes, but Xander had brushed him off, claiming that he was going to spend as little time as possible shopping, and then go back and try to get some sleep. He'd tried to look tired, not that that was hard for him to do; it must have worked, because Andrew had handed over his spare key and scribbled down his address without any more argument.

And now Xander was lying on the bed in Andrew's spare room, which was probably originally a closet or a pantry or something; there was just enough room for a twin bed and a small dresser. Xander recognized this place; it belonged to the Council, which explained how Andrew could afford a two-bedroom apartment, however small, in London. He and his Andrew had looked at it when they were getting settled in London, and had decided they'd rather skip the extra bedroom to have slightly more space.

He'd showered and changed into some of the new clothes he'd bought, though he'd left his shirt off for a while; the fabric was rubbing against the stitches across his back, even through the bandages, and it was bothering him. 

He was supposed to be getting some sleep, but couldn't quite manage it. He just lay there, doing his best not to think about anything, until he heard the front door open and Andrew called, "Xander? Did you make it back yet?"

Xander startled and sat up on the bed. "Yeah," he croaked. This wasn't going to work. It just wasn't. Maybe Xander could convince Giles to send him to another dimension, one without an Andrew in it.

"I brought pizza!" Andrew sounded closer, almost at the door of this room, and Xander scrambled for his shirt before the door opened. "You okay?" Andrew asked.

Xander had his back to the door while he pulled on his shirt, and when he turned to the door, Andrew was looking worried. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"What happened to your back?" Andrew took a step into the room, then stopped.

"Long story," Xander said, passing a hand through his hair.

"I know you probably just want to be left alone for a while," Andrew explained. "So I was thinking I'd just bring dinner and then head back out for a couple of hours. Unless you want me to stay. I can do that too."

"It's your house," Xander said, although he liked the sound of that. "You don't have to leave again." He shrugged again; whatever they'd given him at the hospital had worn off long ago, and the movement hurt his back. "I'm tired, anyway. I'll be staying in here most of the night." 

He told himself that he didn't know that expression meant that Andrew was hurt. He didn't know this guy. It could have just meant that he was hungry and wanted to eat before the pizza got cold. 

"You have to eat something, though," Andrew said. "I'll leave you alone after dinner, I promise."

"I'm not hungry," he said, not looking at Andrew's face and hoping his stomach didn't growl and give him away. 

"I'm not going back to work and telling Mr. Giles I screwed up and let you pass out from hunger," Andrew said firmly. "Eat. Unless--they have pizza in your world, right?"

He nodded. "Yeah. We had pizza." Pizza and movies and ice cream and a plaid wool blanket just perfect for two people to fit under if they didn't mind sitting close. And all of it went up in flames. 

But no matter what he'd said, he was hungry. If he ate quickly, he could be back in his room faster than he could get Andrew to go away by arguing, so he followed Andrew out to the kitchen.

"Okay, because you can never know, right, what's going to be different from one universe to another. Like the world without shrimp, or maybe there's one where chocolate doesn't exist," Andrew babbled as he opened one of the boxes of pizza.

Xander sat down at the kitchen table, and stared at the wall, hoping he could just tune Andrew out. Unfortunately his brain wouldn't let him. It was like he had an automatic on switch for whenever Andrew started talking.

"Can you imagine a world without Cocoa Puffs?" Andrew put a slice of pizza on a plate and passed it on to Xander.

The movement was so familiar--Andrew holding out the plate and Xander reaching for it--that Xander almost dropped it when he froze. How many times had they done this, unconsciously maybe, just talking and eating pizza together--except it _wasn't this Andrew_. Xander tried to focus on that.

"I guess though that if you've never had it, you can't actually miss it," Andrew continued, looking absolutely unaware of what was going on in Xander's head. "You do have chocolate, right?"

Xander sighed and rubbed his cheek. "Yes, Andrew," he replied, trying not to sound too annoyed. "We have chocolate and pizza, and can you just sit down and shut up, please? If I see anything that I don't recognize, I'll ask you about it, but let's just eat, okay?"

"I'm sorry," Andrew said. "I was just trying to help you feel at home." 

He was sure that was true; his Andrew might have been awkward around people--other people, not him--but he did want people to feel comfortable and at home when they visited. But it didn't matter, because he just needed Andrew to stop talking, to stop reminding him of everything Xander had lost. 

"I know," Xander said. "But I'm not at home. I'm never going to be at home again. And nothing you can do is ever going to change that." 

Andrew flinched, visibly, and put down his plate. "I'm going back to work," he said. "Stick the pizza in the refrigerator when you're done. I'll heat it up later." 

Oh, shit. He hadn't meant--he just wanted to be left alone, that was all. "I didn't mean--" he began, but Andrew had already left the kitchen.

Xander was back in his room by the time Andrew came home. He heard him move around and turn on the TV, but Xander didn't move. He knew he should apologize, try to explain, but he kept staring at the ceiling instead, pointedly not thinking. About anything.

Andrew left him alone for the rest of the evening; Xander still regretted snapping at someone who was giving him a place to stay, but he had to admit that it made things easier.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG, we posted Buffy fic!
> 
> We started this fic 'way back in 2007. We wrote a lot of it and planned out the rest, and then RL got in the way of either of us being able to write. 
> 
> When we finally got our brains working creatively again, we finished this. And *then* 2020 interfered with getting it edited. 
> 
> But here it is, and we'll be posting a chapter a week for the next couple of months. Whether we'll ever write Buffy fic again (we do have a couple more ancient WIPs), who knows, but it was great to revisit the fandom that brought us together. 
> 
> \- Mir and Sofy


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Xander meets more of this dimension's version of his friends. It's harder than he expected.

****

The next morning, Xander was sitting on his bed, waiting to hear Andrew leave the house so he could venture out to get a shower and find some breakfast, when Andrew knocked on his door. "Just a minute," Xander said, reaching for his shirt.

"You don't have to open the door," Andrew said. "I just wanted to let you know that Willow and Buffy are both flying in tomorrow."

He almost asked Andrew why he thought Xander would care about that. They weren't his friends; they just looked like them. But then he realized that this probably wasn't a social visit. "I'm guessing they want to see me?"

"Willow especially," Andrew said. "She wants to know about that portal spell."

"I'll be there," he said. Then, hesitantly, he added, "Thanks."

"Don't thank me," he said, quietly. "It's my job to make sure you know this stuff."

Xander got up from the bed, going over and opening the door. "I know," he said, making himself look at Andrew. "And I appreciate it. I'm just..." He tried to think of a way to explain. "Having a hard time adjusting."

Andrew nodded, and kept his head down. "Yeah, I guess you would be. Anyway, Giles said you can just get some rest today, and there's leftover pizza in the fridge too, if you're hungry. Just help yourself to whatever. I left some money on the counter if you need anything I don't already have; there's a shop just down on the corner. I'm going to work now." 

He took a step back from the doorway, and Xander felt guilty for snapping at him again. It wasn't like this Andrew had any clue why Xander was acting the way he was; Andrew just wanted to help. "Oh, if you need to change your bandages or something, there's a first aid kit in the bathroom. Just, you know, help yourself."

Xander knew that Andrew was just trying to be helpful. "I'm sorry about yesterday," he made himself say. 

Andrew shook his head. "It's fine," he said. "Like you said, I should have remembered who you are and what happened to you. I shouldn't have just assumed--" 

"It's hard not to," Xander said. He still found it hard to look at Andrew, but he was going to force himself to at least be polite to the man. It wasn't his fault that Andrew--the one Xander still thought of as the "real" Andrew--was dead. He was just a guy who was doing his best to be welcoming to a stranger who needed help, and he didn't deserve to have Xander snap at him. "And I need to remember that." Especially since it was so hard for him to remember, as well. 

"It's okay," Andrew said again. "I just--you look like Xander, and it makes it hard to remember that you aren't him." 

"I am Xander," he said automatically, and then realized that completely contradicted his own point about Andrew, and shook his head. "But I'm not the one you know." 

"I'll do better at remembering," Andrew promised, and Xander felt like a jackass all over again. "And I'll bring back food tonight, okay? You can eat in your room if you--if you're tired; I don't mind." 

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, that'd be great." And he'd try to eat dinner with Andrew and act like a normal person for at least long enough to finish a meal. 

"Do you like Indian?" Andrew said. 

"Not that stuff with the spinach," he said, and then, without thinking, added, "You know--" He caught himself in time, swallowing the rest of the sentence, the how much I hate it, before it gave anything away. "--the stuff I'm talking about?" 

"Palak paneer," Andrew said. "And I'll get you something else." 

He smiled, not meeting Andrew's eyes. "Thanks."

"I'll see you tonight, then," Andrew said, and Xander nodded. 

"Yeah," he said. "Great." Andrew turned to go, and Xander went back into the room. 

That had gone--not well, exactly, but better. And if he ate dinner with Andrew, that would make up for avoiding him the rest of the time. Nobody would have questions. Andrew worked all day, and Xander had been running and fighting and trying to stay alive for so long that nobody would object if he said he needed a lot of sleep. 

He could get through half an hour a day with Andrew, he told himself.

He spent the day moving from the couch to the bedroom, dozing off and watching TV shows he'd never thought he'd see again. It was weird how good afternoon soaps were after an apocalypse had wiped out your entire world, the actors with it.

Halfway through the episode of _Passions_ , Xander heard Andrew's key in the lock, and froze with his hand on the remote. He rubbed his eye and sat up, shutting the TV just as Andrew was walking in.

"Hi," Andrew said hesitantly. 

Xander reminded himself that he was going to be friendly to Andrew if it killed him. "Hi," he said, but didn't know what should come next. 

Maybe not saying anything was the best way for him not to snap at Andrew for things that weren't even his fault. 

In addition to his briefcase, Andrew was carrying a couple of plastic bags with the name of the Indian place near the Council--or the one Xander remembered being near the Council--on them; Xander got up and crossed the room, reaching for one of the bags. "Here," he said. "Let me help." 

"Thanks!" Andrew beamed at him, and it felt like Xander's heart stopped in his chest.

He grabbed the bag and forced himself to keep going, despite the sudden pain. He was going to get through this. He'd spend half an hour in the kitchen, and then he'd go back to studying the walls and ceiling in his room. Maybe, Xander thought, he should venture out sometime tomorrow and see if the comics shop was where he remembered it being. He'd need some reading material for this "avoiding Andrew" plan to work and not drive Xander completely insane.

"I got you chicken korma," Andrew was saying as they walked into the kitchen and both started to empty the bag they were carrying on the table. "I thought that was a safe way to go, since I don't know what you like."

Xander bit his lip, hearing an echo of Andrew, just a few months ago, finishing that same sentence with, "since I know you have vegetable-phobia," before kissing him. 

"That's okay, right?" Andrew said, going to the cupboard for plates. 

"Yeah," Xander said finally, forcing the words out past the tightness in his throat. "That's great, thanks." He took a plate and a fork from Andrew and sat down at the table, trying to pay attention to the food and not the man sitting across from him. 

"Buffy's going to be here in the morning," Andrew said, sitting down and beginning to spoon green stuff onto his plate. It looked just as disgusting in this universe as it had in Xander's own. "But Willow's flight doesn't come in until three, so Giles thought maybe a dinner meeting would be a good idea." 

There was no way in which it was a good idea, and Andrew must have seen that in his face, because he went on, "He said that maybe if everyone had something else to do besides stare at each other, it might be easier."

Okay, that was a point. "Yeah, okay," Xander said. "There's some stuff I want to do earlier in the day, but I'll be there for dinner." 

"We're meeting at Giles and Xander's," Andrew said. "I'll leave you the address." 

God. Life just kept getting better and better. But if Giles really didn't think the rest of the Council needed to know where Xander had come from, at least not yet, it made sense to have them meet somewhere else. It was risky enough that he was wandering around London where people might recognize him. "Thanks," Xander said, beginning to eat. 

Andrew tried to keep the conversation going, but after the third or fourth "Uh-huh," from Xander, he stopped talking.

As soon as Xander had finished eating, he put his plate in the dishwasher. "I'm going to get some sleep," he said, and made a beeline for his room. 

Xander didn't get out of his room until noon the next day. Andrew had been late leaving, and Xander had ended up falling asleep again. Groggily, he dragged himself into the bathroom for a shower.

There was a note with Giles and Xander's address on the fridge, and some money on the counter with "just in case you need it" written on a post-it in Andrew's handwriting. Xander stared at that post-it for way too long, before crumbling it in his fist and throwing it into the garbage bin. He pocketed the money, drank a glass of water, and left.

****

This had almost been a good day, Xander thought. At least, it had been the closest thing to one he'd had in a long time. He'd taken the money Andrew had left--he was sure it was showing up on Andrew's expense reports, and he'd probably have to pay the Council back once he started getting paid again, so he didn't feel bad using it--and had gone to the comics shop, which had been a couple of doors down from where he'd remembered. He wasn't sure if that was one of those points of divergence Giles and Andrew were so interested in, or just Xander not remembering it very well.

He'd bought a few comics; it looked like things were pretty much the same, so he'd caught up on the issues he'd missed in his own dimension, or that had never been published because of the apocalypse. Then he went to a nearby cafe, where he could get something to eat and read his comics--his collection was for reading, not for resale value, so he didn't mind if they weren't absolutely perfect--and try not to think at all about what he was going to have to face this evening.

It didn't work so well, but he managed to get through the day without breaking down, and he counted that as a good thing. He finished his coffee, stuffed his comics back into the bag, and then turned to the exit.

He could do this.

Xander took a deep breath, and stepped out. Giles' place was in a part of town that he wasn't familiar with, so instead of trying to take a bus or the tube, he decided to get a taxi. 

It didn't take that long to get there, or at least, it didn't seem like that long to Xander, but maybe that was because he would have been happy to put this off for another hour or two. He paid the driver and got out before turning to look at the house. 

It wasn't very big, though Xander had lived in or near London for long enough to know that "not big" still meant "more than he could ever afford." It looked kind of like the house Giles had lived in back in his dimension, actually, which made some sense, he supposed; this guy's taste was probably similar. But it looked lived-in, in a way Giles' place hadn't; warm and inviting, even from the outside, and Xander was suddenly filled with a sense of dread. 

The Xander who lived here was happy, and he wasn't sure he could face that.

He didn't really have any other choice, though. If he turned around, Andrew or Giles would find him later, and he'd have to make an excuse for why he hadn't shown up. As much as he dreaded going in there and facing all of them, he dreaded that more.

He walked up the steps, and breathed deeply before knocking.

"I got it," someone called from inside, and the door opened before Xander could realize that he knew that voice. 

Well, sort of. It sounded like when he heard himself on tape. And when the door opened... 

It had been awkward seeing Giles and impossibly hard to look at Andrew, but being face to face with himself was just weird. From the look on the other Xander's face, he was finding it just as strange. 

"I, uh. I thought it was Willow," the other Xander said, stepping back to let him into the house. "Not that I was trying to lock you out, or anything, but I thought it might be easier to give you a few minutes to adjust before you came face to face with your evil twin." He grinned at Xander, and Xander smiled back weakly.

"Yeah," he said, stepping in. "Sorry to--you know, barge in."

The other Xander shrugged and shut the door behind him. "From what Rupert told me, you didn't really have any choice."

"No, I didn't," Xander agreed. Rupert, he thought, Giles was Rupert. This was just too weird. He rubbed his face and sighed. "I don't think I can do this."

"In your position? I'd--be doing exactly what you're doing, come to think of it, since... well, you know. Anyway, I know what you mean, but they're not going to bite." The other Xander shrugged.

"I guess not." The other him was right; Giles, Willow, and Buffy wouldn't bite. They'd be the same they always were, because he was Xander, no matter where he came from. And that was the problem. Xander didn't think he could deal with the attention he was going to get any minute now.

"Come on, Rupert and Buffy are in the living room," the other Xander said, starting down the hallway. "Willow's probably just a couple minutes away, and Andrew's getting dinner together."

"I can't," he began. Couldn't deal with this. Not all at once, not with Rupert and himself and Willow and Buffy and Andrew, and everyone wanting him to tell them what happened. He'd rather talk to some stranger, someone he could tell as much as he knew about the demons and the portal spell but not have to deal with them asking questions about him. 

The other Xander stopped, putting a hand on his arm. "I get it," he said. "Hey, I've been a little freaked out for two days now. Not about you being here, exactly, but because there's a dimension out there where Rupert's dead."

Xander gave him a very weak smile. "That's not it." 

"I know," he said. "Rupert told me you weren't--" He shook his head. "That's the weirdest part, to me." 

Xander smiled a little more. "It's just as weird to me that you two _are_."

The other him grinned. "Don't worry, that's weird to me, too."

"That's actually reassuring to hear," Xander commented, grinning back. It felt awkward, but it was hard not to grin at his other self. He wondered what this Xander's reaction would be if Xander mentioned his relationship with Andrew; if he'd be as weirded out (possibly more) as Xander was.

"Yeah, I still can't get over the part where we bought a house," his other self added. "But anyway, careful where you sit down, the cat might be stalking the chairs again."

Cat?

Something must have shown on his face, because the other Xander burst laughing and clapped him on the shoulder. "I was just joking."

"Don't do that to me," Xander said. 

"It could have been worse," the other him said, still grinning. "I could have told you we had a couple of adorable adopted kids stashed away somewhere." 

Xander just gaped at him for a second, totally horrified, while the other him started laughing again. Then he smiled. "Seriously, do you really want to take bets that I don't know all your embarrassing secrets, at least from the first twenty years of your life or so?"

"You wouldn't." 

"I might." It felt weird to laugh, weird to be joking around again, and none of the weirdness had to do with who he was joking with. But it had also dissolved some of the anxious tightness in his chest, and he let the other Xander lead him through to the living room.

Seeing Buffy wasn't as strange as he might have thought it would be, if he'd stopped to think about it for too long. He hadn't seen his Buffy in a very long time. She'd been on the front lines, fighting up until the end, and Xander hadn't stopped looking for more Slayers and anyone else who could fight. He didn't even know how she'd died.

But she was also right here. Alive, well, looking just as strong as he remembered her being. "Hey," Xander said, awkward.

She eyed him carefully, and then touched his arm and pulled him down on the couch. "I'm sorry, this must be so weird for you."

He nodded, throat tight. This whole seeing dead people thing should be getting easier by now. "I need to get used to this," he said, looking up and finding Giles standing just a few feet away.

"It wouldn't be an easy thing to get used to," Giles said. "I imagine it'll take time. A generous helping of it."

"Anyone want something to drink?" the other Xander asked suddenly. "I really could use some mind numbing alcohol right about now."

"God, yes," Xander said. "Whatever you have, as long as it's strong." Seeing Buffy wasn't that bad. It wasn't great, but it wasn't that bad. Seeing Giles--he'd gotten through it once; he could do it again. Seeing Andrew was never going to be good, but he'd already proved to himself that he could do it. 

But Willow would be here soon, and the last time he'd seen Willow, he'd left her to die. He didn't know if he could handle that.

The other Xander nodded. "That's what I thought. A strong drink coming right up."

Giles followed him out, saying "I'll help," and then it was just Xander and Buffy. She was still holding his arm, her lips pressed into a thin line.

"I know you probably don't want to talk about what happened, but you're really sure we can't help?"

Xander shook his head. "It's gone, Buffy. My whole world, just gone." He pulled his arm free, and leaned against the back of the couch, sighing. "And you're right, I don't want to talk about it, but it's not like I really have a choice, right?"

"Gone," Buffy repeated, frowning. "How can a whole universe be gone?" 

"Not like that," he said. "There's still a universe. There's even still a planet, last I knew. But there are hardly any people left, and--" He broke off, closing his eye. "Can this wait? I don't want to tell this story more than once." 

"Sure," she said softly, her hand brushing over his shoulder, like she wanted to comfort him and didn't know how, the way Buffy had touched him right after Sunnydale, when he was heartsick and lashing out and not letting anyone near him. 

Anyone but Andrew, at least, and maybe one day, after a few drinks, he'd ask this other Xander how things had gone here. Had it been Giles he'd been willing to let sit with him, or was it still Andrew? It had to have been Giles; there was no way he could have put Andrew through all that and still walked away from him. 

"Dawn," he said suddenly, sitting up again to look at her. "No one's mentioned her. What--I mean, where is she?" He didn't need to ask "what happened?", not yet. Everyone else was safe and whole. There was no reason to believe Dawn wasn't.

"She's at college," Buffy said, smiling proudly. "In Chicago."

"Full ride to Northwestern?" Xander said, and Buffy nodded. Another thing that was true in both places. 

Then Buffy said, "In your world. Dawn's--"

"Everybody's gone," Xander repeated. 

"How?" He started to protest, but she went on. "I don't need the big things. I just need to hear what happened to Dawn, before-- before everybody's here, listening." He could understand that. He wasn't sure he could give her what she needed, but he could understand, and he could try.

"Last July," he said quietly. "Dawn was in London for the summer, working on some independent study project for school and doing filing for the Council to earn room and board." And they'd known, already, that something was coming, that there was going to be trouble, and Buffy had wanted--they all had wanted--Dawn to be somewhere close, somewhere they could keep an eye on her. 

"She did that here, too." 

"The Council headquarters were attacked, and Dawn--" He closed his eye again, trying to block out the image. He'd seen her, and the only reason he didn't have nightmares about her was that his nights were too full of dreams about finding Andrew a few minutes later. "Dawn didn't make it out." 

I'm sorry, he wanted to say. You trusted us with her, and we couldn't protect her. I'm so sorry. But instead he just sat there, fingers plucking at the knees of his pants, while Buffy took a few deep breaths and wiped her eyes and said, "Excuse me for a second? I need to make a phone call."

Xander couldn't say anything to that. He watched her go, almost bumping into Giles and the other Xander who were coming back into the room.

"What's going on?" Giles asked, setting down a tray on the coffee table.

Xander shrugged. "She said she needed to make a call."

"Ah."

Before Giles could ask why--which Xander knew he wanted to do just from the look on his face--the other him gave Xander a glass and sat down on the couch. "We brought the bottle in case anyone needs more."

"Good plan," Xander said. He took a drink; he was going to stay sober, because otherwise, he was afraid he'd explain too much, but a good stiff drink ought to dull the edges of what he had to say, just a little. 

Giles sat down in a nearby armchair. "I thought we'd wait until after we've eaten to get down to business."

"That works for me," he said. Putting it off longer was never going to be a problem for him. "I don't know if I'm going to be able to tell you anything useful, anyway," he added, just as Buffy came back into the room. 

"Dawn says hi," she said to Giles and the other Xander, as she sat back down on the couch, between Xander and his other self.

There were only a couple of minutes of awkward silence; Xander stared into his drink and pointedly didn't look up, even though he knew everyone else's eyes were on him. He just didn't feel like talking at all. Lucky for him, the doorbell rang. Buffy immediately sprang to her feet, and the other Xander followed her out of the room to answer it.

"That would be Willow," he said on the way out. 

Xander put down his glass and stood up, clenching and unclenching his hands anxiously.

"It'll be fine."

He jumped, startled. God, he'd forgotten Giles was still there, which was stupid, because he was standing just a couple of feet away. "Yeah," Xander managed. "I know it will, it's just--" He'd left her there to die. He'd seen her in that last moment, and he knew she was going to die. And he'd left her.

Been pushed into the portal. Whatever.

He couldn't do this. He had to go, now; he just couldn't face her at all. But when Xander looked up to the doorway, Willow was already there, eyes gazing at him. "Xander," she whispered, shifting from him to the other Xander. 

He didn't know what he'd expected, but to have Willow fling herself at him and hug him, as tight as she ever had, was definitely not it.

He stood there for a second, stiff and awkward, not knowing what to do; then he hugged her back, just as tightly, biting his lip to keep from saying I'm sorry, I didn't want to leave you there, I'm sorry, over and over again. He finally pulled back, shaking his head. "I'm not the guy you should be hugging," he said. 

"I'm good," the other Xander said. "She got me at the door." 

He shook his head again. "I'm not your Xander," he said. 

She smiled. "I kind of worked that out," she said, softly. "But you're a Xander, and you looked like you needed a hug."

Xander didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Or maybe both. He took a deep breath and looked away, scratching the skin beneath his eyepatch. "Uh, yeah, thanks," he said hoarsely, and coughed to clear his throat.

"Besides," she said, "I'm not your Willow, either." 

No. No, she wasn't. Willow was tired and bedraggled, with soot smearing her face and her hair tied back with a shoelace because it had been all she could find. "Yeah," he said. "I know."

The other him broke into what could have become an awkward conversation. "I'm pretty sure Andrew's done fussing over the takeout containers," he said. "We should eat."

Everyone else agreed, and Xander followed them to the kitchen. He wasn't hungry at all--the anxiety was twisting his stomach too hard for him to even think about food--but eating would take everyone's mind off him for a little bit. He was all about things that would delay the inevitable. 

The only problem was that now there was no way of avoiding _Andrew_.

Andrew, who was standing next to the table in the dining room, smiling at everyone but Xander. "Food's ready."

Xander decided the easiest thing for him to do was just sit down and let people work out who wanted to avoid him. He found himself sitting between Willow and the other Xander, which was fine, but when Buffy snagged the seat across from Willow, and Giles took his place at the head of the table, that left Andrew no choice but to sit down across from him. When he realized that, Andrew looked down at his plate, not glancing in Xander's direction even when cartons of Chinese food began to be passed around the table.

Xander didn't try to keep up with any of the conversation. It was mostly about stuff he had no idea about anyway. One thing he did notice was that Andrew stayed quiet for most of it.

Xander shouldn't care, but he still looked up from his plate--he hadn't eaten at all, just poked around at the food and tried to make it look like he was eating--and found Andrew looking at him.

He looked down as soon as he saw that Xander had noticed him, going back to pushing his own food around the plate, and Xander knew that it was his fault. Even though he'd made the effort to snap at Andrew less, Andrew wasn't stupid, and he had to know that Xander would prefer to avoid him. 

He wished he didn't feel so bad about it, but apparently, his guilt complex hadn't caught on to the fact that this wasn't the Andrew whose feelings Xander cared about.

And that didn't help him figure out how to fix it at all, either.

He sighed quietly and pushed his plate back. "I can't eat. I'll wait for you guys in the living room." He didn't miss the worried look Willow gave him, or the glance the other Xander and Buffy exchanged. He didn't miss the way Andrew kept staring at his food.

Giles said, almost soothingly: "All right, we'll be there in a moment."

Xander didn't want to be soothed, so he didn't reply, just left the room.

****

Xander somehow knew they hadn't wanted to talk in the living room; it was too formal for this, and the idea had been to put everyone, him in particular, at ease. But he just couldn't stay here while everyone acted so normal.

If they wanted to put him at ease, they could start by sending Andrew home. Willow had to be there; he was pretty sure not even Giles would know the right questions to ask him about the portal spell. And Giles probably felt like he had to be there, too. As for Buffy and the other him--it wasn't so bad having either of them there. But Andrew could go home. Xander had to be too careful of what he said around him. 

Xander took one of the chairs this time, turning it a little so that it would be easy for him to look out the window, away from the rest of them. He settled down in it, rubbing the back of his neck wearily, and waited for the others to come out.

Andrew didn't come in with the others. He didn't know if that meant Andrew had gone or if he was just cleaning up, but it was better than nothing.

Once everyone sat down, Xander decided to jump right in. "I'm not sure when it started. About a couple of years ago, maybe?" He sighed, and closed his eye. As long as he wasn't actually looking at them, maybe he could do this. 

"What I do know was that they were very well organized. They started out by testing us; at least, that's what Giles--the one in my universe--said. Groups of demons attacked Slayers in Asia and Europe. Then it spread to everyone else. Nothing that looked connected at first, but--"

He took a deep breath and continued: "Maybe four months ago, Giles warned us that they were getting more aggressive, but there wasn't anything we could do by that point except try to fight them off."

"What kind of demons were they?" Giles asked.

"All kinds; that's the thing. They were a coalition or something. We didn't realize that attacks from such different kinds of demons were connected."

He kept his eye closed. It was easier if he didn't look at any of them, didn't have to remind himself of how he'd failed them all in his own dimension. "We didn't work out until the end that these weren't demons who were already living here. Uh, there. Once they came through to our dimension, they opened more portals for other demons to come through. That was why no matter what we did, there were too many of them."

"How did that happen?" Giles said. "There aren't many demon races whose understanding of magic is deep enough to be able to work spells of that magnitude."

Xander shook his head. "We have some guesses, but that's all. I'll give you everything I know later, including some of the theories we came up with, but I need to keep going." 

If he didn't get the rest of this out now, he was afraid he never would. "The short version is, we think somebody screwed up really bad when they were trying to summon a demon." Like summoning demons wasn't screwing up badly enough in the first place. He didn't wait for the others to reply, just went on. "We still didn't realize just how bad it was. There were demons, we fought them, it wasn't anything new. And then--"

He broke off for a second, breathing deeply and trying to collect his thoughts. "Take your time," Giles said softly. 

"Then," Xander went on finally, "about three months ago, the demons started hitting heavily-populated areas. Like London. And because we'd been fighting them all along, they opened a portal right into the Council building."

"That's not possible," Willow argued. "The building's warded against that kind of thing. At least, ours is."

"Ours was too," Xander said. "Willow--my Willow--said the same thing. She thinks there's a loophole in the wards somewhere, but she never had a chance to check into it."

Giles started to say something, but she interrupted. "It's at the top of my to-do list for tomorrow," she promised him. "Tonight, maybe, if I can." 

Good. Maybe they'd be able to protect themselves from--Xander swallowed hard, trying not to picture any of what he'd seen. "I was on my way back to London when it happened. Ian Mackenzie--I assume he exists here, too?" Mackenzie had been at Oxford when the Council was destroyed, so he'd survived the First. But he'd been almost a fully-trained Watcher, so he'd wound up being pretty senior in the new, not-very-experienced, Council. 

"Yeah," the other him said. "We know him." 

"Mackenzie called me, I guess when he couldn't get anyone else, and we went into the building together." Xander shuddered. "Everybody was dead. The demons had--had ripped them apart." He took a couple of deep breaths. "I don't remember much about the next couple of days, to be honest. We managed to get everybody who was left together, tried to do what we could. We might have slowed the demons down a little, but in the end, it didn't help." 

When Xander finally opened his eye, his other self was sitting just a few feet away, holding out a glass. "Thanks," Xander said, taking a sip.

"I suppose I died when the Council fell?" Giles asked quietly.

"Yeah," Xander replied, trying to keep the images of what he'd seen from popping into his mind. Massacre didn't even begin to cover it. "You, and Dawn, and-- and--And--" God, he felt like he was going to throw up. He looked at the glass in his hand, and fought the urge to fling it at the wall just so he could hear it shatter.

This wasn't his house, his home, and these weren't his friends.

They had his friends' faces and their voices, but they weren't them.

The other Xander grabbed his wrist and made him look up. "Bathroom's across the hall, if you need a minute."

Xander all but bolted out of his chair.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:** Xander talks to himself.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Xander talks to himself.

****

The bathroom floor was blissfully cool against Xander's hands. He didn't throw up, but he sat next to the toilet bowl, just in case. He concentrated on breathing--in and out, in and out--and tried to make the memories of finding Andrew's body in pieces go away.

He'd just about managed to get his breathing under control when the door opened and the other Xander came in, closing the door behind him before sitting down on the edge of the bathtub. "Willow wanted to come check on you," he said, "but I convinced her this was a time when a guy wants to be by himself." 

Xander shook his head. "I'm all right," he said. He would be. Just a few more deep breaths, a little more time to himself, and he'd be fine. He'd be able to go out there and tell them the rest of the story. It'd be over soon. 

"Bull," the other man said. He was silent for a minute, while Xander slid to press his back against the cool wall, then he said, "So, I got to wondering about things."

"Yeah?" Xander tried to make himself sound casual, when all he really wanted to do was to warn this other Xander to leave it alone, to not ask, to not even think about it. 

"Yeah. I could explain the drinking easily enough--the stuff you've been through, I might be tempted to drink more, too. Who cares what it might do to you, if you're sure you're going to die soon anyway?"

Xander couldn't respond to that; it was too close to his own logic, a few months ago. He hadn't started drinking heavily after Anya died, partly because Andrew was there, but also because he'd been afraid of turning into one of his worst nightmares. But after Andrew--his, and everyone else's, worst nightmares were running wild in the streets; there wasn't anything the alcohol could do to him that the demons wouldn't do first. 

"But--you know, we've seen some pretty bad stuff in our life. At least, I have, and you're me, so I figure you have, too. And we don't usually lose it like that." His voice was softer now, sympathetic, and Xander shook his head, trying to discourage him from going on. 

It didn't work. "If I'd been in your place--no question that I'd have freaked out. Finding Rupert dead like that--it wouldn't kill me, but I'm pretty sure I might wish it had. But you've already told me you weren't with Rupert, so it couldn't be him." 

Now Xander finally found his voice. "Don't," he said sharply. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Tell you what," the other him said, "I'll do all the talking. You just stop me if I get something wrong."

Xander couldn't find it in him to answer his smile. All he really wanted was for to be left alone, in the dark, until he could face the crowd again. Except, no, there had to be one person who knew him better than anyone, and who wouldn't let him hide in here. Damn doppelgangers.

"I'm going to take that as a yes," the other man said. He slid down to the floor, scooting over to face Xander. "Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. I got to thinking, and once I did, it's obvious."

"I don't want--" Xander began, and the other Xander shrugged. 

"Yeah. I know you don't. You don't want to look at Andrew, or talk to him, or stay in his apartment. And--I don't know how things went, there, but here, right after we left Sunnydale, there was--I almost..." He shook his head. "Nothing happened, but it could have. And I'm thinking in your world, it did."

"You think you have everything figured out, don't you?" Xander said, glaring at him. 

"Yeah," the other him said. "I do. And I think that you came in here because you couldn't handle thinking about finding Andrew d--"

"Would you just stop talking!" Xander said, trying not to shout loudly enough that the others would be able to hear.

"I think you need to hear it."

"Right now, what I need is to be left alone," Xander replied.

"No, actually that would be a really bad idea. And I'm going to ask Andrew to get rid of all the alcohol in his apartment. I know why you're drinking, and I understand it, but I also know exactly how you're going to feel when you come out of this funk and realize what you've been doing. Heavy drinking is not something we do."

"Maybe you're wrong about that." Xander hated how well this man knew him. He hated it and he wanted him to go away and leave him be miserable. "And I can get alcohol on my own."

The other him sighed and leaned against the wall. "Yeah, you can. And at that point it's your choice. If you want to deal with the fact that your boyfriend's dead and your universe went to hell by turning into Dad, then be my guest; I've done what I can to help. At least Andrew won't have any reason to blame himself."

"It won't be his fault," Xander muttered. He realized he was curling up a little, drawing into himself, and he made himself sit upright. He couldn't let this get to him. 

"None of this is his fault," the other Xander agreed. "But you're sure as hell taking it out on him, aren't you? And before you say anything, no, he didn't say so. I just know us." He smiled wryly. "We can be real assholes sometimes."

"I just can't--" Xander shook his head and looked away, but the other him grabbed his hand, the touch surprisingly careful.

"This isn't your Andrew," he said softly. "It's not; your boyfriend is dead. I know it's hard and it's painful, and you probably can't even say it in your head yet, let alone out loud, but it's not Andrew's fault."

"What do you want me to do?" Xander growled. "Make friends with him? I can't--"

"It's hard, isn't it, when you don't have anything you can hit?" The hand on Xander's wrist tightened. "Shit, you've got every right to be angry right now, and I get that, but don't take it out on him. Please."

Xander looked at his other self with a suspicious frown. For a guy who wasn't in love with Andrew, he was making a good show of being as protective of him as Xander was-- _used to be_.

"Hey," the other him said suddenly, "just because I chose Giles doesn't mean I don't like the guy, you know." The other Xander smiled, and released his hold on him. "There could have been something, but I was in love with Giles, and I chose to walk away from Andrew because of that. But I can see why you didn't. And I'm telling you: a while from now you're going to hate yourself if you keep hurting him because of what happened to his alter ego."

"What am I supposed to do?" It wasn't like he could just start seeing this Andrew like he was a completely different person. He liked the same food, the same TV shows... God, he didn't want to talk about this, but this Xander was right, he needed to. At least a little.

"Fuck if I know," the other Xander said, slumping back against the wall.

"I'm trying," he said. "I'm staying out of his way most of the time, and I'm--I'm trying, okay. But it's hard. I look at him, and all I see is--" He broke off, shaking his head. 

"We could get him to dye his hair blue," the other Xander said. "Then he'd look different."

Xander chuckled. It shouldn't have been funny, when you thought about it, but it was. It was his kind of humor. "I don't think that'd work," he finally said with an almost painful smile, trying to swallow past the ache in his chest.

"Yeah, maybe not," the other him agreed. "But it could be worth a try." Then he sighed. "I'm sorry the living arrangements suck."

"No, you're not," Xander said. "You're thanking God I didn't take Giles up on his offer to let me stay here." 

The other Xander smiled. "Okay, it would have been weird, but if I'd had any idea how hard it would be for you to stay with Andrew, I'd have gotten over it. All the apartments that the Council owns are already full of Watchers, or we'd let you use one of them." 

"It'll be okay," he said. "I won't be there for that long. Once Giles gets me set up with a new ID, I'm going to ask him to send me out in the field somewhere."

"I don't think he's going to be sending you out anywhere for a while yet, but ID will help you get an apartment, anyway. So, ID? You'll need a new name."

Xander let his head thunk against the wall. "Why would I need the new name? Why not you?" That was mostly a rhetorical question, but the other him still answered.

"I didn't barge in here, you know. Also, everyone in this universe knows me as Xander, it'd be hard to explain."

"And this won't be?"

"We'll come up with something." 

Xander frowned. "Right. Because there's a good explanation for there to be someone who looks just like you to suddenly turn up." They weren't identical, not now--their missing eyes were the most obvious example, and the most permanent, but even without that, no one would have any trouble telling them apart. 

Now. Give him a few more weeks of three meals a day again, let him get a haircut, and the eye patch would be the only visual difference between them. They probably had some different scars, but aside from the eye, none of them normally showed.

"You could be my evil twin," the other Xander suggested. "I used to--"

"--want one of those," Xander finished. "Until I got split into two people and it sucked." 

"Yeah, but this time, we're not each half of a person," his double said. "And it would explain a lot. Like why you look just like me."

"And why it took me all this time to turn up?"

The other Xander shrugged. "Maybe you just took off after Sunnydale. Didn't give any news until you turned up three years later."

"And how come we both lost an eye?" Xander quirked an eyebrow. Truth was, he could totally be the one coming up with that plan. Okay, he was, but--oh, this was getting confusing.

"You lost yours in a car accident."

"And you had to be just like me, and lose yours too," Xander said.

"Yeah!" The other him grinned. "See? Not so hard."

"Who's going to believe it, though?"

"Everyone," the other Xander said. "Everyone who doesn't already know about you, anyway. Rupert hasn't let anyone in on this. We lucked out; when you passed out in Andrew's office and he called for help, the Slayers who answered didn't know Rupert and I were in France, so they think it was me."

"What do they think happened?" 

"They didn't see the portal, so they didn't ask a lot of questions. People turn up hurt all the time, anyway, you know that. They usually go to the hospital first, but it wasn't that weird." 

He shrugged. "The only people who know about you are in this house right now. There are a few other people we'll probably tell, like Dawn, but it never has to be common knowledge. And it's not like I talk about my family a lot. Or at all. Nobody's going to be suspicious if my brother suddenly shows up."

Xander sighed and let his head fall back against the wall with a soft thump. "I guess you're right." Then he added, "So, brothers, uh? Who's the older one?"

"We're twins. Does it matter?"

"Sure it does," Xander said, shrugging. "In movies, twins always mention who was born five minutes before the other."

"Uh, yeah, true. We can decide that later. The most important issue is what the hell we're going to call you now."

Xander shrugged. "It doesn't really matter. It's not going to be my name, whatever it is." 

The other Xander thought for a minute, frowning. "It could be."

"Only if you're offering to change your name." He'd accepted, sort of, the fact that he had to change his name if he was going to stay here, but it didn't matter much what it was. Whatever they chose for him, it wouldn't feel like him. Not for a long tie, maybe not ever. 

"No," he said. "But in second grade, did you try to get people to start calling you 'Alex' instead of 'Xander'?" 

"Yeah. Nobody would." He shrugged again. "So?"

"So, you could be 'Alex' now."

"Our parents are supposed to have named twins 'Alex' and 'Xander'?" 

"Our parents," the other him pointed out, "thought 'Lavelle' was a good middle name." He grinned. "And that's it. Our parents didn't know we were twins--which is true, you have to admit--and so they only came up with one name--also true. So they named us Lavelle Alexander--you--and Alexander Lavelle. And with a first name like 'Lavelle,' you know you'd have started calling yourself 'Alex' as soon as we learned to talk."

Xander shook his head. "That is a stupid story." Then he paused. "But it's the kind of stupid that could happen, I guess."

"Remember the Burnett triplets from elementary school? Mary Jane, Mary Ann, and Mary Kate? It's definitely the kind of stupid that could happen." The other Xander grinned at him. "So, do we have a name?"

It would still be him, kind of. Just turned around, backwards, just like the rest of his life was. "Yeah," he said. "I guess it could work."

"Yeah, it could," the other him said giving Xander's shoulder a little shove. "And I get to be the one who was born first."

"How do you figure that?"

"Because I'm the one with the better first name? You were obviously the afterthought."

"Oh, no," he said. "If I have to go around calling myself 'Alex,' I at least get to be the oldest."

"Okay, deal."

Xander raised an eyebrow at the other him and said, "You're giving up way too easily."

"Maybe I thought you needed something to go your way," the other Xander--no, he guessed it was just "Xander" now, wasn't it, if he was "Alex"?--said. "Or maybe I always wanted a big brother to annoy." 

"Or maybe you're trying to get on my good side for some reason." 

"Well, maybe," he admitted. "I was going to point out that we have to go back out into the living room one of these days."

Alex--okay, it was going to take some getting used to, but it just might work--groaned. "Yeah, I guess we have to."

"I'll give you a minute, and I'll go out and give them the rundown, okay?"

"Don't," he began, and then took a deep breath. "I don't want them to know about Andrew." 

Xander shook his head. "Your secret's safe with me," he promised. "I won't promise not to tell Rupert, but no one else. And you know you can trust him."

Alex wasn't sure what he thought of that. Sure, he could trust Giles--except when he couldn't. His Giles hadn't reacted all that well to the news that he and Andrew had hooked up; where "not all that well" was a metaphor for "completely freaked out about it."

"I don't know," he said, finally. 

"Rupert won't tell anyone else," Xander said. "Not if I tell him you don't want people to know. I don't get why you don't want people to know--" Then he shook his head. "I'm dumb," he said. "It's not 'people.' You just don't want Andrew to know."

He shrugged. He didn't really want to tell anyone else, especially not Willow. He'd already upset one Willow with their relationship, though they'd managed to work their way past it. But it was Andrew who couldn't know what had happened.

"Even though it'd make it a lot easier for him to understand why you're being such a jerk." Xander sighed heavily. "But fine. I promise. I'll tell Rupert, he won't tell anyone, it'll ll be fine."

Alex shook his head. "When I told Giles--the Giles I knew--about us, he was... we hardly talked for over two years, except for Council business, after that. He hated the idea."

Xander looked thoughtful for a moment, and Alex wondered if he'd pieced together more than Alex had meant him to. "Yeah," he said, finally, "but you and Andrew got together right after Sunnydale, right?" When Alex nodded, he went on, "And that means nobody was a hundred percent sure whether Andrew was going to stay one of the good guys. We're sure now. It's going to be fine."

Alex sighed. "If you say so." He really didn't think it would be, but he understood why Xander needed to tell Giles. He just wished there was a way around it. "Maybe you should get back downstairs, now," he said, throat tight. "I'll follow you in a minute."

He needed time to breathe, on his own, before he faced everyone again. They'd have more questions that he probably had no answer to, and he'd need all the strength he could muster for that.

"Okay," Xander said, standing up and running a hand through his hair. "I'll let them know about the name thing, and if you're not out in five minutes, I'm coming back. Seriously, man, it's going to be fine."

He knew Xander would come back for him--at least, he knew he'd have done it--so four and a half minutes later, Alex was standing in the doorway between the hall and the living room, reminding himself that the sooner he went in there, the sooner it would all be over.

When he walked in, Andrew was there, sitting on a chair in the corner. Alex swallowed and looked away. Xander looked apologetic when their eyes met and Alex shrugged. It wasn't like Xander had to take care of everything, and he wouldn't have been able to get rid of Andrew politely in less than five minutes anyway.

"Are you quite all right?" Giles asked, glasses in his hand, although he wasn't wiping the lenses this time.

"Yeah," Alex managed, a bit hoarsely. "I'll be fine."

"We have some more questions to ask, but if you'd rather continue this tomorrow--"

"No, no, this is important," Alex said, quickly. "You guys need to protect yourselves, and I get that." He let Willow take his hand and pull him down onto the couch. 

At some point in the middle of answering all the questions the others had for him, Alex looked up and found Andrew's chair empty. When Alex looked around for him, Xander inclined his head toward the doorway leading into the kitchen. 

Okay, yeah, sometimes, it was a good thing to have someone who thought exactly like him in the room. Alex took a couple of deep, quiet breaths, and turned his attention back on Willow.

"So what do you need first?" Alex asked, trying to sound perfectly calm. "Demons, portal spell, what?"

"Just keep going," Giles said. "Tell us what happened, in as close to chronological order as you can manage, and we'll get back to specific points later."

"Yeah, okay," Alex said. "Um." He took another deep breath. "I, um. Things are kind of a blur for a while; there was so much going on." He didn't look over at Xander at that, knowing that he'd know it wasn't exactly the truth. "Like I said, we got everyone together, tried to find a way to stop the demons permanently, but it didn't work. Nothing worked. And in the end, there were only seven or eight of us left, and London was practically a wasteland. So Willow came up with the idea of a portal spell." 

He looked over at this Willow and smiled. "There wasn't anything we could do in our world except wait to die. Even if we found a way to fight back... from what we could tell, almost everyone was dead already. So we decided that we'd find somewhere else where we might be able to do some good." 

He looked down at the floor, shrugging. "Guess that makes us look like a bunch of cowards." 

"No," Giles said firmly. "I can't see that you had a better alternative."

"You're the only one who came through the portal, right?" Buffy asked. "What happened?"

"By the time Willow had the spell ready, there were only five of us. We were trying to get back into the Council headquarters. Willow thought that would take us through to the equivalent point in this dimension, and we were hoping we'd be able to find allies there. " He smiled, slightly. "And she was right." 

Then the smile faded as he went on. "But the demons followed us. Mei and Keisha didn't make it, and then Kennedy got hurt, and Willow wouldn't go through the portal without her. I tried to make her, but she pushed me through, and then it closed before she and Kennedy got there."

Everyone was silent for a little while. Alex stared at his hands.

"I think that's enough for tonight," Giles said, standing up from his chair. Everyone seemed relieved at that, and Alex couldn't blame them. It was his story, he'd lived it, and he knew just how scary it was.

"I'll drive you back to Andrew's place," Xander offered.

"Sure." Wherever Andrew had disappeared to, it apparently wasn't just the kitchen. Alex wouldn't mind a ride. Maybe in the morning he could ask Giles about a car.

As if on cue, Giles said: "We'll have to talk about the details of getting you established here, but that will wait until the morning. Or perhaps, afternoon, as I suppose you'd be fond of sleeping in after such a hardship."

Alex didn't mention the nightmares. He'd be up early again, he knew that. But he wasn't sure he was up for a morning meeting. Afternoon sounded perfect. "Sure," he said again.

While Xander and Giles talked about the logistics of getting Alex home and back here the next day, Alex tried to make a mental list of everything he'd need. Birth certificate, Social Security number, passport, driver's license, work visa. There were probably other things he was forgetting, but he was sure Giles or someone else at the Council would know. Then he'd be ready to get back to work.

It all seemed so trivial, when all his friends lay dead, somewhere, in a post-apocalyptic world. Now, whenever he'd hear about the end of the world, he could think "I've been there. I've seen it." And it wasn't cool at all.

"Come on," Xander said, steering Alex away from his thoughts. "Time to head back."

Alex said goodbye to the girls and to Giles, and followed Xander to his car. "What's going to happen now?"

"Willow's going to spend most of the night figuring out the Council's wards, I think, and I wouldn't be surprised if Rupert went with her. Apart from that--I guess we'll have to figure out the chain of events that led to, you know..."

Alex nodded.

"Anyway, we'll have to do that, and then we'll get you back on track, and I'm sure Rupert will want to put you to work at some point."

"You guys are understaffed too?" Not that it was surprising at all, considering everything else about their universe was very similar. Alex just wanted to keep the conversation going, keep him from worrying about what would happen when he'd be alone with Andrew. Again.

"Very," Xander replied, giving Alex a sidelong glance. He parked the car in front of Andrew's building. "I'll pick you up around one tomorrow afternoon. We'll go to the Council building to meet Giles. Does that work for you? I figured if we both walk in together, people are less likely to think you're me. I mean, you are, but... you know what I mean."

"Actually, _you're_ me," Alex corrected him, forcing a smile. "But yeah, that works. I'll be ready." He needed to get more clothes. He'd only bought a few things, and they were too casual for the Council. He at least wanted to look like he belonged in the Council offices, even if he didn't think he'd ever feel like he did. He should have plenty of time for that, though; he could stay in his room until Andrew went to work and still be ready and be back in plenty of time for Xander to pick him up. 

Xander nodded. "Okay, then. See you tomorrow." Then, after a short pause, he said, "And remember what I said: go easy on Andrew, all right? This isn't his fault." 

"I'll stay out of his way," Alex said. 

"I've seen his apartment. You can't stay out of his way without making it obvious you're avoiding him. I'm not asking you to become his new best friend, just don't be an asshole." 

He sighed. "Yeah, okay. I'll do my best." He would have expected Xander to understand how hard that would be. 

"Thanks." Xander glanced at the clock on the dashboard. "I'd better be getting back. Someone has to finish cleaning up, and Rupert's probably on his way to the office with Willow right now." 

It wasn't quite, "Get the hell out of my car so I can go home," but it was close enough.

Alex steeled himself before he went in, but Andrew wasn't in the living room. He wasn't in the kitchen either, so Alex grabbed himself a glass of water and hurried into the guest bedroom. 

As he passed by the bathroom, he could hear the water running, so he figured Andrew was in the shower. 

That gave him a little while when he could be sure he wouldn't have to deal with Andrew, at least. Not that he knew what to do with it, except that he didn't want to think. 

Alex sighed, shook his head, and picked up the book that had been on the nightstand--from a previous guest, Alex figured. Andrew had mentioned that he'd had Watchers not based in London stay with him on occasion. He opened the book randomly and started to read.

He didn't have any idea what he was reading. It could have been anything: a cookbook, a romance novel, the secret to eternal life. But he kept flipping pages, keeping his eyes on the meaningless words in front of him and trying to keep his mind blank. 

When Andrew knocked on his bedroom door, Alex was so startled that he nearly fell off the bed. "Yeah?" he said, reminding himself of his promise to Xander. 

"I was going to watch a movie," Andrew said hesitantly. "If you wanted to--you don't have to, if you're tired, but I just wanted to let you know."

Alex hung his head, looking at the book in his hands. A movie with Andrew? That was probably a very bad idea. But he'd promised to be kinder to Andrew. "Sure. Give me a minute," he called back, his voice shaking on the last word.

He hoped it wasn't any of the movies they'd watched together. He didn't think he could take it.

Maybe he'd get lucky, and it was something that only existed in this universe. 

He put the book down, taking a few deep breaths. He'd faced a lot worse than one guy and a DVD. He could do this. 

Apparently, luck had totally forgotten Alex existed, because not only were they watching one of Andrew's favorite movies--and Alex's too; they'd watched _Galaxy Quest_ so many times together--but the only place to sit down in the living room was the sofa, which was only barely too big to be called a love seat.

He stood in the doorway for a few seconds, making himself breathe deeply, until Andrew noticed he was there and looked up. _Shake it off_ , he told himself, and sat down at the opposite end of the couch. 

The opposite end wasn't that far away from Andrew, really, but at least it was a token gesture. 

"Popcorn?" Andrew said, picking up a bowl from the coffee table and holding it out to him. 

Alex shook his head, quickly. His stomach was already tied into knots; adding food on top of that sounded like a terrible idea. "Not hungry," he said, then awkwardly added, "Thanks." 

Maybe he should have sat on the floor instead. Andrew couldn't stop fidgeting and every once in a while, his thigh bumped against Alex's, making him want to bolt. He did manage to sit through the whole movie, but as soon as the credits rolled, he stood. "I should go to bed," he said, avoiding Andrew's eyes.

"Okay," Andrew said, biting his lip and looking up at Alex. "We could--I have a lot of DVDs," he said. "If you want, we could watch something else tomorrow after work?" 

Instead of saying "no" right away, Alex made himself shrug. "I don't know," he said. "Let's wait until tomorrow and see." 

That gave him twenty-four hours to think of a good excuse.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you've probably noticed, the "Xander" whose POV this story is told in is now being referred to as "Alex" in both the narration and by other people. If he's going to try to stay here long-term, he'll need an identity separate from the Xander who belongs to this dimension, and also, to be 100% honest, it gets to be a nightmare having two characters with the same name. :) 
> 
> **Next time** : Alex starts making some long-term plans.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex starts making some long-term plans.

****

Alex spent most of the night tossing and turning. Any time he dozed off, he saw Willow's face as she pushed him toward the portal, and that was enough to wake him up again.

Luckily for him, Andrew's spare bedroom was also his comics storage room; there were boxes under the bed and on top of the dresser packed with carefully-filed comics. Alex gambled that this Andrew kept his collectible issues stored safely away just like the Andrew he knew had done, so he wouldn't be damaging anything by reading them, and started going through the boxes. 

He hit the jackpot on the third box, which was full of Batman comics Alex hadn't seen. Recent ones that hadn't had a chance to be published in his world, others that seemed to be in a whole new continuity he'd never seen... Another difference between their world, maybe? Or maybe Alex just never noticed it before, because of work and apocalypses? No, Andrew would have made time to read them, and Alex would have heard. 

Alex had caught up with the latest issues, browsed the others, and even had time to shower and grab a bagel before Andrew got out of bed. By eight, he was out of the apartment. 

He wanted to stretch his legs, he'd told Andrew, but the truth was that he couldn't stay cooped up with Andrew any longer. He walked around the neighborhood, thankful that this wasn't a part of London he was that familiar with back home. It was like being on vacation, sort of.

When he came back to the apartment, steaming coffee in hand and the daily newspaper under his arm, Andrew had left for the day.

There, he thought, that hadn't been so bad. He'd only had to talk to Andrew for about thirty seconds, and still, it'd be hard to accuse him of avoiding Andrew. He'd just gone for a newspaper. Nobody in this universe could say that Alex hadn't done that every morning.

He went through the newspaper slowly, wondering how much of the differences he noted were genuinely ways in which this universe wasn't like his own, and how much of it came from this world having continued on a normal path while his had been overrun by demons. Maybe he should go to the library and read through back issues of the paper, he thought, just so he'd know what was "normal" here. 

Right now, though, it was time for him to get ready for his meeting with Giles. Xander would be here in a few minutes to pick him up.

Xander was on time, and Alex was grateful that his alternate self didn't mention anything about the big emotional breakdown last night. 

"So, Willow was busy last night," Xander said as he maneuvered through traffic. Alex had always hated driving in London, but since he and Andrew hadn't owned a car, it hadn't been much of a problem. Xander didn't seem to mind it at all, but maybe he got more practice. "She went through every single spell protecting the building, looking for anything that might let those demons, or anything else, get through.” 

“Good thinking.” In Alex's dimension, the attack had been months ago, but just in case the demons were running behind schedule... Alex didn't ever want to see anything like the aftermath of that attack again. 

“Yeah. She found a few weak spots, so this morning, she called in about a half a dozen people, including Rupert, to help her reinforce the spells. They'd have held up under normal circumstances, but--”

Alex shuddered, though he tried to conceal it. “That attack was not normal. You can trust me on that. To let that many demons through at once, Willow--my Willow--said you'd need a lot of power behind the portal spells.” 

“Well, before she went off to crash, she swore nobody could get through them now. You got through because the wards recognized you as me, and also because in any dimension, Willow's a damn powerful witch. According to her, that spell wouldn't get you in the building now, even with her level of power behind them." 

Thank God. That meant Xander wouldn't ever have to identify the mangled mess that used to be the man he loved. At least some version of him would get to avoid that particular nightmare. “Great. So all we have to do is get your 'big brother' settled.” 

“Well, Rupert wants to pick your brains about that demon invasion, of course. The Council building may be protected, but there's still a chance that they'll come through in other places, and we need to be ready.” 

Well, there was a happy thought. If the demons started coming through, Alex didn't have a lot of faith that the Slayers here would have any more luck in stopping them than the ones in his dimension had, even with whatever information he could give them. 

Alex didn't want to say that, not right now while Xander was obviously feeling good about Willow's work with the wards, so he just stayed quiet as Xander parked outside the Council building and they went up to Giles's office. 

Xander didn't knock; Alex figured he was used to just barging right in, especially if he was expected. For that matter, Alex had been that comfortable with Giles once, back in Sunnydale. 

There was another Watcher in the office, a woman carrying a thick stack of files. “I'll have that report for you first thing Monday,” she was saying as Xander and Alex came in. She looked familiar, but only vaguely; Alex thought he might have seen her once or twice at the Council headquarters in his world. 

Giles looked up, smiling as he saw Xander. Smiling at Alex, too--a different kind of smile, of course, the smile Alex remembered from years ago. He hadn't realized how much he'd hated being on bad terms with Giles until he'd come here. 

Not that he envied Xander--he'd definitely made the right choice there, even if it hadn't been a _choice_ , really--but Giles had been his friend for a long time, and it had sucked that that had ended. “Right on time,” he said. “Lambert, I'd like you to meet Alex Harris, Xander's brother.”

Xander grinned. “My older, much less charming, brother,” he said, and Alex pulled a face. 

Lambert smiled at them both, shuffling her folders around so that she could hold out a hand to Alex. “Pleased to meet you,” she said. “Veronica Lambert, Head Archivist.” 

Alex shook her hand, and Giles went on. “Alex is going to be joining us here.” 

“Any experience with manuscript restoration?” Lambert asked, and sighed when Alex shook his head. “Pity. I'm up to my neck. My assistant opted for field work a few months ago, and his replacement informed me that just when I got her properly trained, she's been poached by Translation."

“I'm more of a field-work guy myself,” Alex said. 

“I should have guessed, knowing your brother,” she said, “but I had to ask.” Then, turning back to Giles, “Ten o'clock Monday morning, then?” 

“That'll be perfect, thank you.” Giles made a note on the desk calendar as Lambert let herself out, and Xander and Alex took the chairs in front of Giles' desk. “Can I get you anything, Alex? Coffee? I'll assume you're enough like Xander to not even suggest tea.” 

“I'm good,” Alex said. It was true. He felt better than he had in a while. That was what a couple of nights of sleep in a safe apartment would do for you. Not to mention that this was the first step toward his being able to get out of Andrew's apartment, and getting out of that apartment was necessary for his sanity. “Thanks, though.” 

“All right, then,” Giles said, opening up another file folder. At the moment, the only thing that was in it was a few pages of what looked like handwritten notes. “The first order of business is, of course, to get your identity as 'Alex Harris' set up. Identification, bank accounts, the lot. At least it will be easy to get you an employment history, and the fact that you're from Sunnydale will help with things like school records.” 

Alex nodded. If he wanted to rent an apartment, get a car, leave the country, do anything but live underground, he was definitely going to need ID. And he really did want to get far away from London as soon as possible. There were too many memories here, even if he avoided seeing Andrew. 

“Is that even possible?” he asked. “I mean, fake ID for buying beer underage is one thing, but fake passports and birth certificates and stuff? I know the CIA or MI5 could do it, but we're definitely not the CIA.” 

“No, we aren't,” Giles agreed. “But we do still have a few very useful contacts. I can't promise that your paperwork would hold up under intensive scrutiny, but in routine situations, it should be just fine." 

That was a relief. Alex had had a moment of concern there, fearing he'd be stuck in limbo forever as someone who didn't officially exist. 

“It will take some time, though,” Giles went on. 

Probably some money, too, Alex thought, but he'd talk with Giles later--without his “brother” present, because Xander would just argue that Alex didn't have to pay anyone back--about paying the Council back for all of that once he was back on the payroll. 

“So for the time being, I'm afraid you're stuck here with us. If necessary, you can use Xander's identity; the only difference between the two of you is the eyepatch, and most people aren't going to register that at first glance.” 

“Makes sense,” Xander said. “If you see a guy who looks like us with an eyepatch, and his ID is of a guy who looks like us, with an eyepatch, you're not going to assume that by some staggering coincidence, there are two of us, even if you do register that the patch is on the wrong eye. Easier to believe that the negative got flipped over, or something.”

“Precisely. And it's not all that likely to come up,” Giles said. “Until we can set up your bank account, the Council will pay you in cash, so you won't need identification to access your funds.” 

“Sounds good. Also,” he said, looking at Xander, “we need to start playing up that 'staggering coincidence' angle. You having a twin brother that hardly anyone ever knew about? Not that weird. I mean, how much do you know about Veronica Lambert's family?” 

“Rather a lot,” Giles said, “as we're second cousins. The Lamberts are--were--Watchers going back generations. Veronica was still at university when the First attacked.” 

“Okay, then, bad example. Still. How much do most of the rest of the Council know about his--our--family?” he asked. 

“Pretty much nothing,” Xander confirmed. “It's not like I sit around talking about them. I don't even really like talking about them to Rupert.” 

“Exactly,” Alex agreed. He and Andrew had talked about things, a little, but it wasn't Alex's favorite thing to do. Andrew hadn't much liked talking about his family either, which wasn't all that surprising, what with Tucker having been... Tucker. A family that produced both Tucker and Andrew couldn't possibly have been something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. 

“And if everyone from Sunnydale treats the fact that you have a twin brother whose name is almost exactly the same as yours as something they've known all along, nobody's going to think to argue about it. They'll figure that we should know, right?” 

“Right,” Xander said. “But the fact that I have a twin brother _who also lost an eye_ is a little harder to believe.” 

“But easier if I give you crap about copying me.” Alex grinned. “I knew you always wanted to be cool like me, Xander, but really, putting your eye out? And you didn't even get that right.” 

“Hey, at least I lost my eye trying to save the world. What about you?” Xander shot back. “A car wreck? Boring.”

Before Alex could reply, Giles interrupted them. “Yes, I believe you both have the idea. And let me just say that I am extremely grateful that you weren't actually twins, Xander, and therefore I only had to put up with one of you when you were younger.”

“Right,” Xander scoffed. “Who told me his one regret from back when I got split into two people was--” He broke off suddenly. “You know what? Never mind. Not the time and place.” 

Alex grimaced. “Definitely not the time and place. Please don't finish that sentence in front of me, ever.”

“If we could get back to the matter at hand?” Giles said, sounding a lot like he had back in the library in Sunnydale. 

Alex and Xander both fell silent. 

“Thank you. As I was saying, you both seem to have a good grasp of the sort of dynamic that will be most likely to convince people of Alex's identity. Establishing it in a more official manner will take time, so Alex, I'm afraid you'll have to stick close to Council headquarters for the time being. There's plenty of work you can do here, even if it's not the sort of thing you enjoy.” 

Great. Stuck in London. Stuck with Andrew. Stuck in hell--well, he'd be stuck in hell no matter where he went. He'd been stuck in hell for months now. But Giles was right, so Alex didn't argue. “Yeah, okay.”

“Perhaps we should give some thought to your accommodations, as well. People may think it odd if Xander's brother isn't staying with us.” 

Alex almost agreed immediately. Anything to get out of that apartment with Andrew. But Xander was frowning and shaking his head. 

“I'm not so sure that's a great idea,” Xander said. “I mean, sure, if you really want to, you'll be welcome. But I think we still weird each other out a little, right?” 

Alex nodded. Not to mention that the idea that in this universe, he'd wound up living with Giles was still weirding him out a little. The only reason it wasn't weirding him out a lot was that everything else in his life was already so weird. 

“And besides, I kind of think--look, I know it's hard for you. But I kind of think you need to spend a little more time with Andrew.”

Alex scowled at Xander. "You know why that's a terrible idea.” He glanced over at Giles. Xander had said he was going to tell Giles about Andrew in the other dimension, but had he done it yet?

From the pity in Giles' eyes as he looked at Alex, he definitely had. Well, at least Alex didn't have to explain. 

“I also know you need to get yourself used to the idea that he's not your Andrew, any more than I'm you. We're different people--a lot alike, but not the same. And the Andrew here isn't the same as the one you left behind.” 

“I didn't leave him behind,” Alex shouted. “I buried him. What was left of him. If he had still been alive, I never would have gone through that portal without him.”

Then he realized he was sitting in Giles' office, in the middle of Council headquarters, yelling at the top of his lungs about his dead boyfriend, and shut up. It would make this whole cover story pointless, and they really didn't want that--a lot of the Council were going to find out anyway, eventually, but they didn't want the idea that dimensional travel was possible to be widely known. That was how you got an unstoppable demon invasion in the first place. 

Also, he didn't want people feeling sorry for him.

“I'm sorry,” Xander said. “That was a shitty way to phrase it. I know you wouldn't. But my main point still stands: that's not your boyfriend. That's another guy, who looks a lot like him and acts a lot like him--but maybe not as much as it appears on the surface--but who isn't him. And he's around a lot. He's Rupert's assistant. He and I are friends. He gets along okay with the girls, too. 

“And, I mean, you can stick around until you get your ID and then disappear off into the wilds of Outer Mongolia and never come back here again, if that's what you really want, but I was kind of hoping you'd stick around. Or at least visit every now and then. I always wanted a brother, and now I sort of have one. But if you can't even be in the same room as Andrew for more than two minutes without freaking out, that's going to be hard. So I was thinking it would be a good idea for you to try, really try, to start seeing him as a totally separate person.” 

“I hate you,” Alex muttered after a long silence. 

“Does that mean I'm right?”

“No, it means you're obnoxious.” Alex sighed. “But also right.”

“If that's settled,” Giles said, “could we move on to the next subject? I don't know if Xander has told you that Willow has corrected some flaws in the Council's protection--”

“Yeah,” Alex said, “he filled me in. And that's good, but it's not like the Council was the only problem, back where I come from. I mean, from a personal perspective, yeah, that's really important--” although Andrew and Giles and Dawn and everyone else probably would have died anyway, just not there and not then-- “but if it had just been an attack on the Council, I wouldn't be here.” 

“Understood,” Giles said, “which is what I wanted to talk about. Now, it's entirely possible that whatever happened to bring about the demonic invasion in your dimension simply didn't happen here. I have to admit, that's certainly what I'm hoping. But it's also conceivable that the invasion is happening in a different time-frame: either events are progressing more slowly, or will be occurring in our future.” 

He was right, of course, but Alex still didn't want to think about it. The one thing he did like about being here was the feeling of physical safety. He could sleep without having someone to watch his back. He could walk down the middle of the sidewalk in broad daylight without putting himself in danger. It was taking some getting used to--even though he'd spent most of his life living that way, the fear had gotten down into him, somewhere in his bones--but he didn't want to go back to living on permanent alert. 

And he didn't want any of these people, who had been nothing but kind to him even if they weren't really the people he knew, to have to live that way, either. Or die that way.

“We don't exactly know what did happen,” Alex said. “By the time we realized this was something different than the usual demon activity, it was already in the middle of happening, if you know what I mean. We had some theories--well, mostly Giles had some theories--but we never got a chance to confirm any of them. And after a while it didn't seem all that important. We were too busy just trying to stay alive.” 

Giles nodded. “Anything might help us, though; we seem to have the advantage of time, here. Did my analogue discuss any of his theories with you?” 

“Sort of.” Mostly around him, because Alex wasn't the go-to guy for theoretical discussions about magic and dimensional travel. 

“I'm not sure if I understand all this right, but Giles said that there are... not just other dimensions, but different sets of other dimensions? Like, this dimension and the one I'm from are part of a whole set of versions of the world as we know it. Not just Earth, but the whole universe, I mean. So where I'm from has its own whole universe, too, but it's basically the same as this one? Some changes, yeah, but more or less recognizable. If the changes happened a long time ago, maybe a lot less recognizable--like, if the dinosaurs didn't die out, or something, things are going to look a whole lot different on Earth, but the laws of physics still work, and all that.” 

He paused. “Which I know sounds like I got it from some sci-fi movie, but that's how it got explained to me.” 

“And if the changes were pretty recent, then it's a lot like this dimension, but Spock has a goatee,” Xander says. “You definitely got it from science fiction.” 

“It isn't wrong, though,” Giles said. “It isn't something I'm expert in; to be honest, in many ways, that isn't even part of the Council's sphere of interest. We leave that up to philosophers and theoretical physicists. But we do know it's theoretically possible to travel between the dimensions.”

“Like when a vampire version of Willow showed up in Sunnydale,” Alex said. “Did that happen here?”

“Yeah,” said Xander. “But Willow says--we talked about it when I was telling her about you--that traveling from one dimension to the other is usually accidental. She says it's really hard to do it on purpose.” 

Alex grinned proudly. “It is, but Willow--my Willow, I mean--figured it out. She even figured out how to make sure we were going to a dimension that was pretty close to our own, instead of Planet of the Dinosaurs; her spell homes in on signs of human civilization.”

“If anybody could do it, it'd be Will,” Xander agreed. “But that doesn't explain the demons, does it?” 

“I hadn't gotten to that yet. That's a whole set of related dimensions. It's like, oh, Batman comics versus movies versus cartoons versus Adam West. The characters and the situations are similar, but there are a lot of superficial differences, and some dimensions have more differences than others."

“No humans is 'superficial'?” Xander sounded skeptical. 

“From the perspective of the universe as a whole, yes,” Giles said. 

“But there are other dimensions--or, I guess, other sets of dimensions--that aren't even part of our 'set',” Alex said. “And that's where demons come from originally. Some of those dimensions aren't that different compared to ours, which is why there are demons that are mostly human-looking, and not even always hostile to humans. They're basically weird-looking people. Sometimes weird-looking people with really nasty habits.” 

“Those are the demons that manage to establish themselves well here,” Giles said. “Some of them have their own societies, enclaves or tribes that exist on the edges of human society, or in the wilderness.” 

Xander nodded. "And Hellmouths are gateways from those dimensions into ours, yeah, got it." 

“Unless you're near a Hellmouth, it's even harder to get from a demon dimension to this dimension than it was to get from my home world to here, because they're not connected in the same way. But if I remember right, there are also demon dimensions that are a lot farther from ours,” Alex said. “Those demons are a lot stronger and a lot worse. Willow thinks, thought, that those... I don't know, mega-demons? She thought their dimensions related to the regular demon dimensions the way the demon dimensions related to ours. So they have to make two difficult dimensional jumps to get here. But if they manage it, they're almost impossible for us to fight." 

“And that's what happened to your world?” Xander said. 

“We think so, yeah. “

“Do you have any idea how they managed to come through, and in such large numbers?” asked Giles. "It would be unbelievably difficult for just a few of them to get through to our world."

Alex shook his head. “Not really. Looking back, we could identify some... test runs, I guess? A few strong demons, in a limited area. We know when those started, at least approximately, so we can narrow down a time period, but we don't know how they learned to get through. Giles thinks--my Giles thought, I mean--that someone, some human here, must have summoned one of them, and it learned the spell that way. But there's just no way we could figure out who or when or where.” 

Xander looked at Giles. “Does that sound like anything we've run across?” 

Giles shrugged slightly. “There are always people who think it's a good idea to summon demons, but nothing that sounds like it would have caused a calamity on that scale. We should start going back through our files, though, to see if we see any of those test runs Alex mentioned."

“That's a thing I could work on until I can go out in the field,” Alex said. “I might recognize the patterns, and at least it's something useful I could be doing.” 

“Thank you,” said Giles. “I was going to suggest that.” 

There was a knock on Giles' door, and Andrew came in without waiting for an answer. “Oh, I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't realize--you know, you really should put meetings on your calendar, because your schedule says that you're free right now.” 

Xander looked over at Alex and grinned, shaking his head. “He's never going to remember to put anything on the calendar, Andrew. You're just going to have to start coming in here and copying things down from his appointment book.” 

“Never mind,” said Giles. “What did you want, Andrew?” 

Andrew waved a handful of colored file folders. “I printed out some things I found online for you,” he said. Then, to Alex, he explained, “I keep alerts set for various news stories that might be signs of supernatural activity of some sort. Most of them turn out to be nothing, of course, or even just something a tabloid made up, like Bat Boy. But there've been a lot of alerts in the past forty-eight hours or so, way more than usual. I printed out some of the most reliable reports.” 

Giles sighed. “Thank you, Andrew,” he said. Alex could have told him that was a bad idea. Once Andrew got an idea in his head, he was totally going to miss any sarcastic attempts to discourage him. You had to come right out and tell him--as kindly as possible, of course, but more importantly, directly. 

At least, that was what the Andrew that Alex knew--had known--was like. Who knew about this guy? Totally different people, Alex reminded himself. 

But the exasperated tone in Giles' voice hadn't dissuaded him, and now Andrew was setting folders down on Giles' desk, one at a time. “The yellow folder is disappearances. People, animals, objects--there's a report that a whole convenience store vanished, but I doubt that's accurate; it'd be on the evening news if it had.” 

A blue folder followed it. “Missing time. I've clipped the printouts together: one stack for people who attribute it to alien abduction; one for a handful of stories blaming it on the Sidhe, elves, fairies, et cetera; and one for any other explanation, or no explanation at all.” 

“That's very helpful, but--”

A green folder. “Ghost sightings. I ignored all the ones that seem to be either hoaxes or actual ghosts; these are all stories that don't fit the usual parameters for postmortem activity.”

“Andrew, perhaps these would--”

The last folder, red this time. “And this is all the reports that didn't fit into one of the other categories. Some of it might be demon activity, but mostly, it's just weird. The stuff that's obviously demons gets forwarded on to the usual departments, same as always.” 

Andrew stood there after he'd finished, waiting for Giles to say something. From the look on Giles' face, whatever he was going to say was not going to be the response Andrew had hoped for. 

Without thinking about it, Alex cut in. “Thanks, Andrew,” he said. “I'm going to be looking for signs that what happened in my dimension is starting here, so I'll go through these folders. Maybe something will turn up.” 

For a split second, he almost smiled at the look of gratitude Andrew gave him. Then he remembered that this guy was a total stranger, and felt almost sick.

Once Andrew had left the office, Giles said, “You don't really plan to waste time looking through this rubbish, do you?” 

Alex shrugged. “I might as well. You've said it yourself: we don't really know what I'm looking for. And maybe, if something sounds familiar, it'll put me on the right track. We have to do everything we can to make sure that what happened in my dimension doesn't happen in yours.” 

He reached out a hand for the folders; Giles handed them over with obvious reluctance. “Maybe I won't have time to go through them on top of everything else you have for me to look at. But it's not worth ruling anything out at this stage. We don't know enough to know what's irrelevant.” 

And maybe Andrew ought to get to find out what it was like to be taken seriously, for a change.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time** : The fic earns that "excessive _Doctor Who references_ " tag. And Alex tries to get more comfortable around this dimension's Andrew.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fic earns that "excessive Doctor Who references" tag, and Alex tries to get more comfortable around this dimension's Andrew.

****

“You really don't have to help me,” Alex said, piling the stack of folders on the desk Giles had assigned him. The office was pretty bare-bones, but he wasn't going to be here long, just until all his forged paperwork went through. Then he'd get out into the field and away from London. So the battered desk, rickety chair, and empty bookshelves, not to mention the fact that he'd seen bigger broom closets, weren't going to be a problem.

Xander set the chair he'd snagged from a conference room in front of the desk and plunked down into it. “I know I don't. Maybe I want to help you.” 

“It's research. Why would you want to help?” Then it clicked. “Oh. You're probably just as eager as I am to get me out of here. Don't worry. Just as soon as I have a passport, I'm leaving London. I can keep looking for signs of the demon apocalypse just as well in Cleveland or somewhere.” 

"What? No! I'm not trying to get rid of you. As far as I'm concerned, you can stay around here as long as you want. It's the whole 'demons destroying the world' thing that I'm worried about.” 

Alex opened the desk drawer, discovering that someone had stocked it with pens, paper clips, and legal pads. He got out a pen and a pad, then, internally shrugging, handed them over to Xander and got more for himself. 

"Andrew set up your office,” Xander said. “The phone should work, which is a minor miracle. I think Rupert's hatred of technology has spread to the actual building, but Andrew's good at getting things working.” He paused. “Except the copier. I don't think an exorcism would help the copier.”

“Okay,” Alex said, wanting to move the conversation away from Andrew as quickly as possible. “What folder do you want? The Council reports, or one of the weird ones?” 

“Let me start with one of the Council ones,” Xander said. “I don't think I'm up to reading the _Weekly World News_ as summarized by Andrew.” Then he paused. “I'm not trying to keep making you talk about him,” he said, “but that was a nice thing you did back there. Rupert... well, Andrew's great, but he's also great at getting on Rupert's nerves.”

“He does a lot better when he feels appreciated,” Alex said, and then stopped himself. “Well, maybe. He did. Or--my Andrew did. And... “He shrugged. He didn't know this Andrew. He had to remember that. He pushed a folder over to Xander instead of finishing his sentence. 

Xander flipped the folder open. “Yeah, I get it. If there was someone who looked like Rupert, sounded like him, I'd probably want to help him out, too. Even if I knew it wasn't him.” He sighed. “Especially if I knew I wasn't ever going to see him, the real him, again.” 

“Let's just get to work,” Alex muttered. He really didn't want to talk about Andrew. 

He absolutely didn't want to talk about Andrew. Except that every time he opened his mouth, he found himself talking about Andrew. 

“I didn't give Andrew enough credit,” he said, putting aside the folder on “disappearances.” Andrew was right; even in a town that had fewer people in it than the last bus Alex had taken, the complete disappearance of a convenience store would have attracted actual media attention, not just a couple of word-salad-infested blog entries. But there were a few others that were more credible; there just wasn't anything solid linking them to any demonic activity. 

Xander looked up from his own notepad. “You find something?”

“No, not really.” He reached for the “missing time” folder and pulled out a stack of papers clipped together. A post-it note on the first page marked it “aliens.” “I just mean... my Andrew. I know how much he's--how much he had changed from when I first met him, even from when we were first together. I mean, he still let his imagination run away with him, and he still sometimes took the easy way out of things, and he was still the biggest dork in the history of dorkiness. But he'd changed so much--he'd worked hard to change--and seeing this version--”

“Hey, Andrew's changed a lot.” 

“Not as much,” Alex said. “And I know, that sounds kind of conceited, because the main difference I can see is that my Andrew had me and this Andrew didn't. I don't think it's me, specifically, though. But having somebody in your corner helps a lot.” It had helped Alex, that was for sure. 

“Yeah, I get that,” Xander said. 

“Good.” He'd assumed Xander would, but he didn't want to get into a deep conversation with other-him about the state of other-him's relationship with Giles.

“So maybe it's good that you're here,” Xander went on. “I mean, for Andrew. I know you're not going to be there for him the same way, but you do know what he's capable of becoming."

Alex shrugged. “Maybe. I'm only sticking around until I have a passport, though. I'm going to try to get used to him, but we're not going to be best buddies.”

“I know.” Xander's shrug was a match for his own. “Hey, Andrew and I are friends, but we don't hang out all that much,” he admitted. “So it'd be kind of hypocritical to assume that you two would.” 

That made sense. If he and Andrew hadn't been together--if he'd turned Andrew down--would they have wound up being close? He didn't know, but he doubted it. 

It hadn't exactly been love at first sight with them, after all. It hadn't even really been love at first kiss. At first, it had been a lot more casual than that: comfort, somewhat awkward friendship, sex. Then they'd found something else to appreciate about each other: having someone who liked enough of the same things you did to be able to distract you when you crawled too far inside your own head. Everything else had grown from there.

If they hadn't been spending so much time together, that wouldn't have happened, and Andrew would have been to Alex what this Andrew was to Xander: a friend, someone who had eventually shown himself to be worthy of at least a degree of trust, but not someone to let close. So he couldn't blame Xander; all he could do was to be so damn grateful that he'd made the choice that Xander hadn't. 

Because at least for a few years, he'd had Andrew. Who'd turned out, as unbelievable as that probably sounded to everyone else, to be the love of his life. 

“I'll be right back,” he managed to blurt out, before pushing past Xander and out of the tiny office. The door to the stairwell was only a few yards away, and that would get him out of sight. Alex pushed it open and stood there on the landing, leaning against the placard showing the fire evacuation route and trying desperately to get his shit together before Xander came looking for him. 

Xander didn't come looking for him, but when Alex finally came back, there was coffee sitting on the desk. 

“Also,” Xander said, “don't tell Rupert, but I stole the Jaffa cakes from his desk drawer. I figured we deserved a snack break.” 

“Yeah, thanks,” Alex said, and by the time they'd finished their coffee and he'd stashed the remainder of the package of Jaffa cakes in his own desk drawer--”Giles can consider it my signing bonus,” he'd announced--he felt like he could probably get through the rest of the day without losing it again. 

The jury was still out on whether he could get through the rest of those folders without dying of boredom, though.

****

“I can't remember if I already asked,” Andrew said, fiddling with the DVD player in a way that was distressingly familiar. How could two DVD players in two different apartments in two different dimensions have the same wonky disc tray that had to be jiggled to get it to go back in correctly?

Because they were cheap DVD players, Alex reminded himself, and cheap crap had problems. It wasn't some weird sign. It was just a coincidence. All over London, there were probably at least a dozen people jiggling the tray to get their DVD to go back into their bargain-basement player. It didn't mean anything. 

“Asked what?” Alex said. He was sure Andrew would have finished his sentence once he'd conquered the DVD player, but he needed to do something to shut his brain up. 

“You had _Doctor Who_ in your world, right?” 

“Yes, you've asked--” Of course he'd asked, that was probably on Andrew's top ten list of things to ask someone from a parallel universe-- “and yeah, we did.” 

“Did you ever watch it?” 

“Yeah. Not in Sunnydale, but... someone made me watch it, later. A friend.” 

“Made you watch it? You didn't like it?” 

“No, I liked it fine.” He smiled. “I just liked complaining about it. For a while, anyway. Then he caught me watching it when I thought no one was around, and I had to give that up.”

There. He was doing great. He could tell Xander (and apparently the human brain could adapt to anything, like calling another guy by his name, and calling himself Alex; maybe one day it would even adapt to the absence of Andrew) and Giles that he had had at least one civilized conversation with Andrew without freaking out, snapping at Andrew, or wanting to run away. 

Well, he didn't want it very much.

Andrew stepped away from the DVD player, brandishing the remote. “Want to watch? I was going to make popcorn.” 

Alex really wanted to say no. Or, at least, he kind of wanted to say no. He also didn't want to spend yet another evening holed up in Andrew's tiny spare room. He'd done that on Saturday and last night, too, after spending all day both days, and all day today, holed up in his tiny office at the Council. He'd never been claustrophobic, but he was starting to feel that way now. 

And besides, he was supposed to be using this time to increase his Andrew tolerance. “Sure,” he said, and then grinned. “Got anything with the fourteenth Doctor? They never got to film anything but the regeneration sequence, because...” 

Andrew gaped at him. “How are you up to fourteen Doctors? The _tenth_ Doctor's only had one series here so far, and--it's 2006 where you're from, isn't it?” 

“Yeah, it's 2006. How are you only up to ten Doctors?” he asked, trying hard not to laugh. “Did somebody stick around for a decade or so?” 

Andrew frowned. “It's only been back since last year. Kind of hard to fit in six Doctors in that time.” 

“Wait, _back _?”__

__He waited for that to connect in Andrew's mind. “It was gone. Since 1989, until last year--well, except for the movie, but that was awful, there was kissing. I mean, there's been kissing since then, too, but that opened the door, and I don't approve."_ _

__"I think you're getting off-topic," Alex said. Not that he really minded. Andrew--his Andrew--hadn't approved of the kissing in the TV-movie, either, but had softened on it when he decided it opened the door to Jack Harkness kissing the Doctor. Clearly, this Andrew hadn't had the same change of heart._ _

__"Yeah, sorry. Anyway, it only came back last year. Did that not happen where you're from?” Andrew's eyes got huge. “There's _Doctor Who_ out there that I haven't seen. Not even telesnaps or the Target novels. That is so not fair. Also, that's an important point of divergence, we should probably get someone researching--” _ _

__Alex suddenly felt kind of bad. “Don't freak out, Andrew. I was yanking your chain. We didn't get any _Doctor Who_ you didn't.” Well, probably, but if he said that, Andrew would look up episode guides and make him compare notes and that was just a little too much even for a guy who used to have a complete set of _Babylon 5_ collector's plates. At least, it was too much for right now._ _

__“Too bad,” Andrew said, over his shoulder as he headed into the kitchen. “That would have been cool.”_ _

__Alex occupied himself by turning on the TV and letting the DVD get to the disc menu. At least it wasn't going to be the ones in the parallel universe. He couldn't take Mickey and Jake today._ _

__This wasn't going to be traumatic. This was going to be two guys, temporary roommates, watching a couple of episodes of a TV show they both liked._ _

__He sat down on the couch and waited for Andrew to bring out the popcorn._ _

__“Ooh, good,” Andrew said a few minutes later, setting a giant bowl of popcorn on the coffee table, then handing Alex a can of soda. “You've got it all ready to go.”_ _

__“Thanks. Ready for me to start it?”_ _

__Andrew sat down on the couch, not quite at the opposite end from Alex. Part of Alex wanted to get up and move away from this impostor, but then he reminded himself that it wasn't Andrew's fault, and anyway, he wanted to be able to reach the popcorn. “Sure. Go straight to 'School Reunion,' though.”_ _

__“Oh, no. No way am I falling for that.”_ _

__“What do you mean?”_ _

__“I'm not watching 'School Reunion' with you. First of all, the bad guy creeps me out. Secondly, I know what's going to happen. You're going to cry, and then you're going to make me watch that weird K-9 spin-off from the eighties, and then we're going to end up having to marathon every single Sarah Jane episode--” He broke off, suddenly, realizing what he was saying._ _

__Andrew just sat there staring at him, a handful of popcorn raised halfway to his mouth. “You can't know that. I don't-- I've never watched these episodes with Xander. I've never watched _Doctor Who_ with Xander at all.” _ _

__“Don't listen to me. I'm talking nonsense.”_ _

__“No, you're not. That's what happened the first time I watched 'School Reunion,' except I was alone.”_ _

__Alex tried to shrug nonchalantly. “I'm a really good guesser?”_ _

__“You watched them with him, didn't you? With the other me. He's the friend who got you to watch the show in the first place.”_ _

__He took a deep breath. “Yeah, Andrew, he was.”_ _

__“So--we were friends, in your world? I mean, more than here. Xander and I get along fine, but we don't hang out. He's busy, and he has Mr. Giles, and, you know.”_ _

__“Yeah,” Alex said again, struggling to keep his voice steady. “I guess you could say we were friends.”_ _

__Andrew beamed. “That's great. I mean, I always thought that Xander and I could be really good friends if we had the chance, you know? There's just not a lot of time here. But I guess things were different where you came from.”_ _

__Alex nodded. “A little bit, yeah.” He selected the episode with the cat-nuns and pressed “play.” Maybe the show would distract Andrew from this conversation._ _

__It did, for a few minutes, but they weren't even that far into the episode--the Doctor was babbling about how hospitals should have a little shop--when Andrew said, “So. Um. This is probably going to sound pretty pathetic, but... if we were friends, do you miss me? Him, I mean. Because sometimes...”_ _

__He shrugged, curling into himself a little bit, his shoulders hunched up around his ears, and the rest of his sentence came out in one long rush of words. “Sometimes I feel like nobody really would. Not for very long, anyway.”_ _

__Alex couldn't breathe; everything suddenly hurt too much. He just sat there and stared at Andrew and tried not to see any of the images his brain was reminding him of:_ _

__Andrew, in a ridiculous “Kiss the Cook” apron, burning the hell out of dinner. (And Alex kissing him anyway, because hey, it was a direct order, he had to obey the apron. “Obey the apron” had become a running joke.)_ _

__Andrew, in a motel room somewhere in Nevada, after he'd walked in on Alex sobbing like a baby over Anya, and just... being there._ _

__Andrew, barely recognizable in a pool of blood, and Alex kneeling beside him begging him to just _get the fuck up, Andrew, please,_ until somebody dragged him away. _ _

__If he could have moved, he'd have fled to the safety of his room, but he couldn't do that, either._ _

__And Andrew--this Andrew, this almost-stranger--must have seen something in his face, must have been, like Alex's Andrew, a lot smarter than most people gave him credit for being, because he looked at Alex for a long minute and then said, “You weren't friends, were you. I mean, not _just_ friends, anyway.” _ _

__And now Alex could make his voice work, just a little, because what was the point in lying now? “No. You're right. We weren't. We were...” but he couldn't finish the sentence._ _

__Andrew closed his eyes for a second, mumbled something that sounded like, “Oh, God,” and practically ran into the kitchen._ _

__He should probably feel bad that he'd freaked Andrew out so badly. And he did--or at least, he would, eventually, but right now he was too busy feeling like a scab had been ripped off to reveal that the wound underneath hadn't actually been healing at all._ _

__He missed Andrew. He'd known that, sort of, but that was the kind of feeling that it was easy to push aside when there were so many other things eating away at him since Andrew had died: anger, guilt, pain, fear._ _

__Easy to overlook the fact that for the past few years, he'd had Andrew there, by his side, making stupid jokes and crying over a TV show and turning their apartment into an actual home and just being Andrew, which, as it turned out, had been exactly what Alex had always needed in his life._ _

__So yes, he missed Andrew, his Andrew, desperately. But that wasn't something to dump on this other guy who was almost, but not quite, the same person. Especially when said other guy apparently didn't even think his friends would miss him if he died._ _

__He just hadn't been able to help it, not when Andrew had come right out and asked. And now that there didn't seem much choice but to feel all the damn pain he'd been able to partly suppress while he was busy trying to stay alive, he wasn't sure he'd be able to hide it from him._ _

__But the only decent thing to do would be to try, because none of this was this Andrew's fault._ _

__Andrew came back in after a few minutes, carrying two mugs. He held one out to Alex. “Cocoa,” he said, and Alex tried not to notice that Andrew's eyes were red-rimmed and bright. “I mean, if you want it. You don't have to, I just thought--well, I wanted some, so I thought you might, too.”_ _

__Alex took the mug. “Yeah,” he said, and told himself that it didn't matter that his Andrew had always gone straight for the tin of cocoa when he was upset. This was a different person, and he probably had just been cold. It was October in London. It could get pretty chilly. “Thanks. That was nice of you.”_ _

__Andrew sat down on the couch again, this time all the way at the far end, putting as much space as he could in between them. “I'm sorry,” he said._ _

__“You haven't done anything,” Alex pointed out. “You've been nice to me while I've been a grouchy asshole.”_ _

__“I guess you had a pretty good reason, though,” Andrew said. “I mean. It's kind of awkward.”_ _

__“You could say that, yeah.”_ _

__No, “awkward” was “there's another me here, and he's living with Giles.” This was so much worse than awkward._ _

__“I didn't understand before,” Andrew went on. “I just thought we could probably be friends, and that you might have wanted a friend, and so I didn't get it. But now--I can stay away from you, if you want. I don't have anywhere else to go, but I'll stay at work late and just come home to sleep. If that will help?”_ _

__Wasn't that what Alex had wanted? The chance to keep completely out of Andrew's way?_ _

__Now that Andrew was offering, though, it sounded like a really terrible solution. It wasn't going to help him to learn to look at Andrew without flinching. It wasn't going to help him get any better--not that he'd ever get over Andrew, but he could get more functional, anyway. And it wasn't going to be halfway fair to Andrew, and apparently even when it wasn't his Andrew, Alex wasn't okay with being shitty to him._ _

__“Nah, I don't think it'll help. I'm not really sure anything will help,” he admitted. “But being a jackass to you is definitely not going to make anything better. Let's just start the DVD again from the beginning?”_ _

__Andrew blinked in surprise, but nodded and reached for the remote control._ _

____

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time** : The Council (mostly Alex) keeps looking for signs that the demons will be invading this dimension, and turns up some peculiar occurrences.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Council (mostly Alex) keeps looking for signs that the demons will be invading this dimension, and turns up some peculiar occurrences.

****

Even if he'd decided he and Andrew didn't have to avoid one another completely, Alex still hadn't seen much of him in the past couple of weeks.

Alex had been spending a lot of time in his office, looking for signs of the demon invasion that had devastated his own world. He'd gone through all of Andrew's folders--that was all definitely weird stuff, but it wasn't the right kind of weird stuff--and then started working on the backlog of Council reports, starting a year ago and working forward. The most exciting thing that had happened to him was getting his stitches taken out.

He'd only seen Andrew at work once, when Andrew had come by for his files. "We're starting to get a lot more of these," Andrew said. "Enough that even Mr. Giles agrees we should investigate more thoroughly, especially all these disappearances."

"People?" Alex asked. "Or things?" 

"Some of both. Buildings, too. So far only two that we can confirm, and they're both abandoned. The official story is that they were demolished, and nobody's arguing, but who carts away every scrap of rubble from a demolished building? There'd be something there." 

Yeah. That was completely weird, he had to agree. He'd handed the folders over and wished Andrew luck with them, then got back to his own work. 

Xander helped him out most of the time, but he was taking a group of young Slayers out on patrol at night this week, so he didn't come into the office until around lunchtime. It made for a series of long, boring days. At least Alex was busy enough that he could stop himself from thinking. Reading page after page of field reports from Watchers who made Giles look relaxed and un-stuffy tended to leave his brain too numb to focus on his own problems. 

But it did get monotonous as hell, and so when Xander burst into the office, he was a welcome distraction.

"Hey, do you want--" Alex began; they'd gotten into a habit the past couple of days where Xander showed up and then promptly took off for lunch with Alex. Alex appreciated the company, and according to Xander, it was a rare day that Giles was willing to leave his desk at lunchtime, so he was usually free.

But Xander interrupted him before he could get out his restaurant suggestion. "Do you have this week's field reports yet? And last week's, too, while you're at it."

"Yeah, they're over there on the filing cabinet." Alex had started with January of last year and started working forwards; he had no idea exactly when the first stages of the demonic invasion would have started, but it seemed reasonable that if it had happened, it couldn't have been that long ago. He could always request older files from the archives if these were a dud.

"Great." Xander grabbed the folders. "Lambert, in the archives? Rupert has had her looking into all this weird stuff that's been turning up."

"I bet she loves that," Alex said.

"She's ready to kill him, but she's found something. Or she thinks she has, maybe, but she needs the recent reports to fill in the gaps. She's got all the stuff Andrew finds on the internet, but she wants to see if the other Watchers are noticing anything. I happened to poke my head into Rupert's office when she was talking to him about it, and I got enlisted as their errand boy." 

He shrugged. "Get your jacket on. I'll drop those files off, we'll go and get lunch, and then we're both supposed to show up in the archives to help her."

Well, he had just been thinking that things were getting boring, so Alex got his jacket without complaint.

Lunch, it turned out, had to be takeaway, because Lambert wasn't happy about the two of them leaving for twenty minutes, let alone long enough to actually eat a meal. She might not have wanted to take on this extra assignment, but since she had to, she obviously wanted to get it done and off her desk as quickly as humanly possible. That meant enlisting everyone who wasn't either busy with something that couldn't be put aside, or senior enough to tell her no when she asked.

Alex and Xander--and their lunch-- found themselves at a table in the conference room near the archives, with Andrew and this dimension's version of Ian Mackenzie. Alex had to take a few deep breaths, thinking about the last time he'd spent much time around the Mackenzie he'd known, but he was fine by the time Lambert handed each of them a packet of Post-It flags.

"Do _not_ write on the field reports," she said. "Some of them are on our servers and we could print another copy, but some of those are the originals, and we haven't had a chance to copy them for you."

"Got it," said Alex. "What am I looking for now?"

"Anything weird," Andrew said. "Like the stuff in those folders I gave you when you first got here. Or just basically weird."

Xander laughed. "These are Council field reports. It's all either boring or weird. Sometimes both." That earned him a dirty look from Mackenzie. "It's true," Xander insisted. "I'm not saying boring is bad. Boring is _awesome_ , because nobody dies from boring. But a lot of the stuff in these reports is really dull."

"Weird for us," Andrew clarified.

"Anything beyond usual amounts of supernatural activity," Lambert said. "If you're in doubt, flag it anyway. I'll make the final decisions myself as I enter the data into the computer."

"And now you see why Rupert's not involved," Xander told Alex. "He'd probably want her to do this with pins on a map."

"He _did_ want me to do this with pins on a map," she said. "Even after I explained to him that I wanted to be able to show the progression over time, which would get incredibly messy on a physical map."

"That's Rupert for you," Xander said fondly. "He never met a technological advancement he didn't hate." 

They settled down to work, Alex and Xander eating their sandwiches with one hand while marking up the field reports with the other. The reports in Alex's stack were all from the same few Watchers, and someone had arranged them in roughly chronological order. Some of the Watchers filed weekly reports, while others--more thorough or more enthusiastic--seemed to report in more often, so it wasn't just a matter of all the reports from a week being stacked together.

And as Alex went through them, he started to notice something. "Anyone else seeing the 'weird stuff' happening a lot more often lately?"

"Yes," Mackenzie said. "I was wondering about that. My earliest reports are from about a month ago, and there's only the expected level of activity--an occasional vampire, a few lesser demons, one chap dabbling in necromancy. But I'm up to the reports from the week before last, and there's been a definite increase in activity, particularly demon incursions and ghost sightings."

"I'm looking at some reports from this week," said Andrew, "and you're definitely right. I mean, I'd already noticed that from my Google alerts, but the reports are backing me up. Things are getting weirder."

Alex tried very hard not to visibly shudder. An increase in weirdness, especially when demons were mentioned, could not be good. Could, in fact, mean that this dimension was heading down the same road his had, and that all these people were going to die in the same horrible way his friends had.

He must have failed, though, because Andrew frowned, then got to his feet. "Alex, I need some help bringing some more files from my office," he said. "Can I get you to come with me?"

Alex almost laughed. Andrew probably thought he was being stealthy. Still, since nobody else had seemed to notice that there was anything wrong with him, maybe no one else thought Andrew was being incredibly obvious. "Yeah, sure, fine," he said, and followed Andrew out into the hall.

Andrew waited until they were around the corner before he said anything else. "You looked like you were going to pass out," he said. "I figured maybe you needed some fresh air."

"I'm not sure the air's all that fresh out here," Alex replied, "but yeah. I could use a break."

"You think it's happening here, don't you? I didn't want to say anything in front of the others--well, not Xander, he knows, but Ms. Lambert and Mr. Mackenzie. Anyway, you do. You think whatever happened in your world is starting here."

"I don't know," he admitted. "I don't know what we missed when we were looking back to try to figure out what happened, so I can't say that none of this weird stuff--the missing time, the disappearances, the hauntings, all the rest of it--happened in my world. But all we saw when we looked into it were demon attacks. Vicious ones, by demons who were seriously bad news. And I haven't seen any of those."

Spelling it all out like that made the tight bands of terror around his chest loosen just a little, and he could take a deep breath. "So maybe not, but it's too much of a coincidence for me to be comfortable. And if it's not an invasion, it still can't be anything good."

Andrew nodded. "I don't like the sound of it either. Still, like you said, we can't be sure either way yet. Let's just let Ms. Lambert get all the data entered into her mapping software and see if that tells us anything before we panic." He smiled at Alex, and for once, the familiarity was comforting rather than painful. "At least then we'll know what we're panicking about."

In spite of himself, Alex laughed. "Good thinking," he said. "Now, do you actually need my help, or was that all just a cunning plan?"

"Ninety-five percent cunning plan. Five percent, I do have some files we should probably use to establish a baseline on the phenomena that I track, the ones most people don't put in their reports. Not really enough for two people to carry, but I'm willing to let Mr. Mackenzie think I'm a wimp."

"I'm willing to let him think that I wanted to swoop in like a knight in shining armor and save you from having to carry your own folders, then," Alex said. "Let's go get them."

****

"This," Veronica Lambert said, gesturing toward the world map projected onto the whiteboard at the front of the conference room, "is a visual representation of all the significant events in either official field reports, or Mr. Wells' particular research, during the first week of September of this year. You'll all find a detailed analysis of the data in your e-mail, but these maps serve quite well as a summary."

The map had a number of colored flags on it, scattered throughout the world. "The full key to the flag colors is in the lower right of the screen, but in short: the red represent vampire encounters, the blue demon incidents, the yellow magical activity requiring Council intervention, and the other colors represent various minor occurrences--for example, purple represents a report of someone experiencing the phenomenon known as 'missing time.'"

As Lambert pointed out the meaning of a particular color, she clicked something on her laptop to make all the flags of that color flash briefly, attracting attention. Alex glanced over at Giles, who was tapping his pen on his notepad, obviously not impressed by the display.

"As you can see," Lambert went on, "while the events are not evenly spaced throughout the world, they _are_ commensurate with the population density of various regions and the extent of Council involvement--which explains the relative frequency of events in the United Kingdom, for example."

"It's not that there's more weird stuff in England, it's that there are more Watchers noticing it?" Alex translated.

"Precisely. And there are more flags in this part of the United States--" she lit up a region-- "because it's the area surrounding the Cleveland Hellmouth. Both concentrated activity, and more Council involvement."

She clicked her mouse again, and the map changed. "And this is the second week of September. You'll see that while events naturally occur in different locations, they're occurring at the same basic frequency--the graphs are in your email--and the areas where events have clustered are more or less the same. Now, I won't bore you with the details--"

On Alex's left, Xander scribbled something on his notepad and then shoved it in front of Alex, who had to struggle not to smile at the words "too late" in bold capitals. Lambert was taking a long time to get to the point, he had to admit, but then again, most of the people in the room still needed to be brought up to speed.

"--but these next few maps will be the summary of activity for the remainder of September and the first two weeks in October." She clicked through the next few maps fairly quickly, but left them up long enough to see that every week, while not identical to the last, fell into the same basic patterns. "I believe that if we went further back into the archives, we'd see the same essential level of supernatural and unexplained activity, with exceptions during significant events such as the rise of the First Evil."

"May I assume this is leading somewhere?" Giles asked.

"You may indeed, Mr. Giles. One of the places it's leading is to a funding request that will be on your desk by tomorrow morning, because at this point, I believe that we need to have a dedicated member of staff tracking reports in this way from here on out--and it won't be me, I assure you. But the other, more interesting, place that it's leading is to this." She clicked ahead to another map. "This is the summary of the third week in October."

"It looks exactly the same," someone at the far end of the table said; Alex couldn't see who it was and didn't recognize the voice.

"At this scale, it does," Lambert replied. "However, if we focus on one particular region--" She clicked again, and zoomed in on England. "Here, I'll bring up the previous week for comparison." When there were two maps of England side-by-side on the screen, Alex could see what she was talking about. There were definitely more flags in the southeastern part of the country on the later map. 

"There was an eleven percent increase in activity in the London metropolitan area as compared to the previous week," Lambert said. "The maximum fluctuation from week to week in the previous maps was less than six percent, and the average was only four."

She brought up yet another map, and zoomed in again. "The fourth week of October, showing a twelve percent increase in activity from the previous week."

Another map. "And this is last week: not only a fourteen percent increase from the previous week for the London area, but a nine percent increase for the entire southeast of England."

"It's spreading?" Alex said.

"So it would seem."

Once Lambert had gotten to the point, Giles had started appearing a lot more interested. Now, he said, "Can we pinpoint the source of the anomalies any more accurately? If they're centered on a particular area--"

"We can," Lambert said, "but not yet. We didn't enter the location with that level of precision, so at the moment, we can't go into that much detail. However, I propose that we should go back and do that straight away."

"Absolutely," Giles said. "And by 'straight away,' I assume you mean tonight."

"It's that urgent?" she asked, and Alex realized that Lambert hadn't been told what they were looking for, not exactly. It was definitely that urgent, though if the invasion had already started, they were probably all doomed no matter what they did.

"It is," he confirmed.

"I'm going to need help."

"You'll have it. Xander, Andrew, and Alex will still be assigned to help you, as will I. Will you need anyone else?"

She considered for a moment. "No, I believe that'll be fine. Thank you, sir."

"I'll stay," Mackenzie said. "I might as well, I've been working on this all afternoon anyway."

Lambert smiled. "I'm sure there's room for one more."

Giles nodded. "Everyone else should go home and get some sleep tonight," he said. "We don't know what we're going to turn up, and it may mean long days for all of us ahead. Also, if you become aware of any unusual activity--particularly here in London--make a report directly to Ms. Lambert at once. Don't wait until you file your weekly reports."

The meeting broke up; it was after six p.m., so most people didn't linger, wanting to get started on their journey home. When everyone was gone except for those of them who were going to be working into the night, Giles looked around and sighed. "I believe I should let the two of you know what it is we're looking for," he said, looking at Lambert and Mackenzie.

Alex winced. He really wasn't ready to have strangers know who he was. There was no reason not to tell them, though. 

Maybe he should have trusted Giles, though, because Giles went on to say, "We have some credible information suggesting that there may be some powerful demons attempting an incursion into our dimension. We're trying to find any evidence that this is happening, so we can thwart the attempt."

"So," Mackenzie asked, "do you want us to focus just on demonic activity, or keep looking at all the same phenomena we flagged before?"

"All of it," Giles said. "I simply felt that since the two of you are dedicating so much of your time and energy to this project, you should know what you're actually doing."

Lambert nodded. "It might be helpful to know. Then again, it might make no difference." 

Then she addressed the entire group. "All right. You've already flagged all the relevant anomalies in the reports. Go through, identify anything happening in London, and pinpoint it as precisely as possible. If the information isn't in the report, hand it over to me or to Wells, and we'll try to dig up better information online."

They divided up the reports between them and got to work. Before long, they had enough sites identified for Lambert to start inputting the data on her computer, and a big enough list of locations they couldn't pinpoint for Andrew to have gone to get his laptop to start searching for them.

"Anything?" Giles asked Lambert around eight o'clock.

She sighed irritably. "Give me time. I'm still adding locations to the database."

"You're the one who keeps talking about how much faster things are on the computer," Giles muttered.

"Okay," Xander whispered to Alex, "now I can believe they're related."

" _Distantly_ related," Lambert corrected him, and Xander grinned at her.

By nine, though, Lambert stood up and stretched. "All right, I have enough data points for some preliminary results." She turned on the projector again--this time, displaying four images side by side: maps of London, labeled with dates corresponding to the second week in October, up through last week. "The area of increased activity seems to be spreading," she said, "but they're spreading out in a definite radius from a particular area of London."

She clicked her mouse, and a small rectangle of each map was highlighted in yellow. On the first map, there was only one red flag in it, but by the second, there were around a dozen; in the third, there were also occasional flags in the area just outside the rectangle; and by the fourth map, the additional flags had spread out to the edge of the map.

"What area is that?" Alex asked; with four maps displayed on the screen, the text labeling the streets was small enough that he had to squint.

"That's here," Andrew said. He got up and pointed at the image. "Right here, that's this building. Whatever this is, it's focused on the Council."

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:** Alex and Xander figure out why this dimension hasn't been overrun by demons, Alex makes some questionable decisions, and the fic earns its E rating.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex and Xander figure out why this dimension hasn't been overrun by demons, Alex makes some questionable decisions, and the fic earns its E rating.

****

Alex hadn't been part of the team assigned to investigate the anomalies. His forged paperwork hadn't come through yet, and since there was likely to be a good bit of field work involved, he'd gone back to his original assignment.

At least Giles was keeping him up to date on their progress. They were reasonably confident that the anomalies didn't have anything to do with the demon invasion, which was also a comfort. While there were demon incidents on Lambert's maps, those didn't seem to have increased in frequency. The other events were troubling, but they weren't the kind of troubling that woke Alex up in the middle of the night, drenched in cold sweat.

He and Xander had gone back to the files from 2004--the last recent year they had reasonably-complete records for, thanks to the First's attack on the Council--in their search for any event that might have been the precursor to the invasion. So far, they hadn't had any luck, but as Alex pored over some extremely badly-written notes from September of that year--he didn't have to look at the name of the submitter to recognize his doppelganger's terrible spelling--something caught his eye.

"I remember this guy," Alex said. "At least, I think I do." He pushed the folder over to Xander. "I remember the list of stuff he was trying to get his hands on, at least." 

One of the Council's less savory contacts was a guy who ran a New Age shop in Liverpool with an incredibly skeevy back room; he traded information to the Council in exchange for the Watchers only putting a stop to his more overtly harmful business. 

In Alex's dimension, he'd told Alex that he had a customer asking for a lot of very rare ingredients. Most of them were powdered or distilled body parts from various supernatural creatures--again, _incredibly_ skeevy back room--but as nobody had been able to determine what he would have been doing with them, they'd added the customer to their watch list and let the matter drop.

If Alex remembered right, the guy had disappeared off the face of the earth a few weeks later. Not really a loss, from all he could tell.

"Oh, yeah, _him_ ," Xander said. "What a loon. I mean, it's a shame what happened to him, but then again, I don't know what we would have done with the guy if we _had_ managed to capture him alive."

Alex frowned. "Capture him? He was trying to import some really gross stuff, but most of them weren't actually spell ingredients, so--"

"Yeah, they were," Xander said. "Don't you remember? That grimoire he stole from that scholar in Edinburgh? He was trying to..." His voice trailed off, and he gaped at Alex for a moment.

"Trying to what?" Alex asked, when Xander didn't continue. 

"The grimoire," Xander said. "It was a book full of spells to call demons and bind them to serve you." He flipped a page of the report. "Yeah, I remember now. The reason that book was so valuable was that it contained spells for summoning really powerful demons, and not just making them serve you, but gaining their powers for yourself--they'd kind of possess you, but you'd be the one in control."

Alex shook his head. "I don't remember anything about a book like that. This guy, what's his name--"

"Charles Llewellyn," Xander supplied after glancing at the report.

"Yeah, that was it. This Llewellyn guy tried to buy a bunch of weird stuff off Barry McCann, you know, with the sketchy magic shop in Liverpool? And McCann let us know, because he might be a scumbag, but he's not actually in favor of anything that might end up unleashing unspeakable evil on the world."

Xander nodded. "Yeah, that's what happened here too."

"Well, we looked into it, and the list didn't look dangerous, just creepy."

"Here, they were the components for one of the nastiest spells from that grimoire. Once we realized that, we sent a team of Slayers after him. They were supposed to get the spell book from him and destroy any preparations he'd made for the spells, but one of the spells he was trying to attack the girls with backfired, and he died."

"In my world, we were keeping an eye on him, but he disappeared." Alex shook his head. "He wasn't connected to the theft of any book. I don't think McCann mentioned anything about the book."

"No, McCann didn't know anything about that part. That was stolen from a guy in Scotland. But Rupert knew about the book, and some of the ingredients sounded familiar to him, and when we checked into it..."

"The book was about summoning and controlling demons," Alex said. "Unusually powerful demons."

Xander nodded. "Do you think--?"

"Maybe. I just don't understand how we didn't make the connection. I mean, back in my world. If that _is_ how the demons learned how to come here, he must have gotten his hands on the book, so why didn't we figure it out?"

"I don't know. I'm trying to remember how _we_ figured it out. I don't think it made all that much of an impression at the time. The only part of it that was really memorable was the spell backfiring." He grimaced. "I was there for that. It wasn't pretty." Xander turned back to the report, presumably to try to find something that would jog his memory.

Alex just sat there for a moment, head resting on his hand. He couldn't believe it. Had they actually found it--the reason why his home had been destroyed and this dimension was still safe? 

There wasn't any way to be absolutely sure, but Xander's description of what Llewellyn had been up to certainly seemed to fit. If he'd been trying to bring a powerful being through from one of the outer dimensions, that could have opened a way into Alex's world that other demons could follow. 

And his disappearance--that could have either meant that something went wrong with his plan, and whatever he'd been trying to summon had killed him, or that he'd succeeded, and Llewellyn-plus-his-new-demon-buddy had been able to hide himself from the Council.

Maybe in his world, the Council hadn't learned about the theft of the grimoire until it was too late. He had a very vague recollection of Andrew talking about some guy, a collector of some kind, who'd contacted Giles and implied that the Council might have stolen something from him, but he couldn't remember what, or who the guy was. Alex hadn't ever seen him. He couldn't even say whether that had been before or after the thing with Llewellyn, because neither event had made much of an impression on him.

"I remember now," Xander said abruptly, looking up from the report. "It was just one of those weird things. I was telling Rupert about the call I'd gotten from Barry McCann, and he must have had the theft of that book on his mind. The owner had accused us of taking it. I think he used to know Rupert, or at least, they used to know some of the same people. Back in the bad old days, I mean, which is why he thought Rupert might have had something to do with the theft."

Alex assumed those "bad old days" were the same as they'd been for his Giles, the ones that had meant a demon had come after Giles and all of his old friends, back when Alex had been in high school.

"Giles didn't say anything about the book," he said.

"Rupert didn't take the guy seriously," said Xander. "It was just because we were talking over dinner, and I mentioned all the weird stuff that Llewellyn wanted. I don't know that Rupert ever saw the book, but he had some idea of the kind of spells that were in it, and... " He grimaced. "He doesn't like to talk about it, but I get the feeling that the crap he was doing back in the seventies was a low-grade version of the stuff in that book, so he recognized some of the ingredients."

And at the time when they'd heard about Llewellyn, Alex and Giles had barely been talking. Definitely not about anything that wasn't strictly necessary. They certainly wouldn't have been sitting around comparing notes about the work they'd been doing.

And because of that one little difference, Alex's whole world was dead.

Alex didn't notice that Xander had gotten up and come around the desk to put his hand on Alex's shoulder. "Are you okay?" Xander said. "No, scratch that. You're definitely not okay."

"This is it," Alex said. "I'm sure of it--as sure as I can be, at least. This is why your world is still here, and mine isn't." Feeling sick and completely shaken, he got to his feet. "Can you--somebody needs to tell Giles and the others. And maybe verify it, as much as possible. I don't know. I just... I need to get out of here."

"I'll go with you," Xander offered. "I can call Rupert and tell him what we found. I don't think you should be alone."

"Maybe not," Alex said, aware he was being melodramatic but not really able to stop himself, "but I don't have any choice about that."

****

Two hours and a trip to the off-license later, Alex was well on his way to getting drunk. Not falling-down drunk, and thankfully not the kind of asshole drunk his dad was, but drunk enough that it was blunting the edge of everything he was feeling.

Xander had called an hour or so ago to tell him that Giles agreed: they'd probably found the key to the demon invasion. While it wouldn't hurt to continue to be on the lookout, they could probably breathe more easily now. Alex could focus on getting settled into the dimension that was going to be his new home.

The dimension where his counterpart had succeeded where he'd completely failed; where all his friends--all of humanity--would be able to go on about their lives.

And that was great, of course. Alex wouldn't have wished what happened in his world on anyone. He'd just been subconsciously hoping that whatever had changed the outcome in this dimension had been something nobody had had any control over.

Instead, all it would have taken was him being on good terms with Giles. Not just "we can work together," terms, but friendly terms. Maybe not even as friendly as Xander was with the Giles here--because that wouldn't have happened, not in Alex's universe--but just better.

Or to have passed the information on in another way, he guessed.

It didn't really matter. Pondering what had happened wasn't going to fix it. His world was, for the most part, dead. Andrew--his Andrew, the one Alex loved--was dead. All his friends were dead.

Most unfairly of all, Alex wasn't.

Not that he _wanted_ to die. Not even in the worst weeks right after the attack on Council HQ had he wished he was actually dead--well, maybe, if it would have saved Andrew's life, but not in general. It just didn't seem fair that he was alive, when his friends, who were smarter, more talented, more capable of doing some good in the world, just generally _better_ , weren't.

Willow had been the one to work out the spell that got him here, even, and she hadn't been able to use it.

If Alex hadn't been drinking, right now he didn't think he could stand knowing that.

After a while--he wasn't sure how long, he wasn't watching the clock--the door opened, and he realized that he should have gone back to his room a while ago.

"Hey," Andrew called, hanging up his jacket, "Xander gave me the good news."

Alex shrugged. "I don't know that it's all that great of news," he said. "It's not _bad_ news, but it's not like anybody had to do anything to stop the demons. You guys did that already without even knowing it."

Andrew sat down on the couch next to Alex, frowning a little at the sight of the bottle and glass on the coffee table. "But we did it," he said. "Or anyway, other people did. I didn't even know about it. It was done, though, and that's the important part. You don't have that hanging over your head."

Alex poured some more of the whiskey into his glass and took a long swallow. "Yeah," he said. "I guess I should be feeling pretty great right now."

"We should probably have your paperwork in a week or two," Andrew went on, "so you'll be able to really make a start at getting settled in here."

He set his drink down on the table with a bang. "Settled in? What, you think I'm going to start feeling at home here, _ever_? My world is dead. My friends are dead. My boyfriend is dead. And I'm stuck here in--in-- _Bizarro World_ , where I'm surrounded by people who have their faces and their names and mostly even act like them, except they're _not_ and they're never going to be."

For a moment, Alex just tried to breathe, not looking at Andrew. "And the worst part, the absolute worst part, is that you all managed to save your world without even trying. All it took was for Xander and Giles to have one conversation. All it would have taken in my world would be for me and Giles to have _one fucking conversation_. Except we couldn't, and I _want_ to be sorry about that, except that you know why Giles and I didn't talk much back then?"

Andrew shook his head.

"He didn't trust me, because of Andrew. Because he wasn't totally sure he could trust Andrew, back then--mostly sure, yeah, but not completely. And I got mad, and there was a lot of yelling, and then..." 

He shrugged. "Okay, I guess it might have been more complicated than that, but still, it boils down to this: Giles and I didn't talk much because I was living with Andrew. And that means--"

He was _not_ going to cry. He was tired of crying in front of these people. "That means," he said, trying to keep his voice steady, "that I can't even be sorry that I didn't accidentally save the world, because that would mean being sorry about Andrew, and I will never, _ever_ be sorry about him."

Oh, fuck. He was going to cry after all. And not some dignified tears sliding down his face, either, but ugly sobs that hurt his chest and throat. He wanted to punch something. Maybe he'd go back to the Council and see if there were some Slayers going out on patrol tonight that he could tag along with. Hitting a vampire might make him feel better.

No, he knew nothing was going to do that. He was just going to have to get used to feeling like this.

"You don't have to be sorry, "Andrew said quietly. "It's not your fault, anyway. You're not the one who decided to summon the demon. It was just dumb good luck that we managed to stop him, and dumb bad luck that you didn't--and it wasn't anybody's fault but what's his name, Llewellyn's."

"Stop," Alex muttered. "Stop trying to make me feel better. It won't work." He felt like he was going to choke. God, he hated crying. He really hated crying in front of people.

"Sorry," Andrew said. He stopped talking, but he hesitantly put his hand on Alex's shoulder.

Alex left it there. Even from someone who was technically almost a stranger, the quiet sympathy felt good.

"Maybe I was wrong," Andrew said. "I don't think you're ready to get settled in here. I mean--maybe you need to take a little time to just deal with this? I know, dashing action heroes don't usually take time off no matter what happens to them, but maybe you ought to? I'm sure Mr. Giles would arrange things for you, if we asked him."

"I don't want to take any time off," Alex said, scrubbing at his face with the back of his hand. "I don't need to "deal with it," anyway. It happened, and it sucks, and that's the end of it. Taking time off to feel bad about it isn't going to help."

"You'll never know until you try."

"Guess I'll never know." It was bad enough that he was sitting here getting drunk and crying. In front of not-his-Andrew. It was bad enough that it was _easy_ , or at least a lot less difficult, to cry in front of even this Andrew.

It was even worse when Andrew hugged him. It wasn't that much of a hug, really, more like an arm thrown awkwardly around Alex's shoulders and a hesitant squeeze, but Alex knew it was a genuine attempt to comfort him.

"I don't know," Andrew said, "I think you're making an okay start."

"You can't fix this," Alex said. "You can't turn it into a story that has a happy ending."

"Yeah," Andrew whispered. "I know, believe me." He put both arms around Alex now, pulling him into an awkward, but real, hug. Someone being nice to him was apparently way too much for Alex tonight; he'd thought he was crying before, but it turned out he had just barely gotten started.

It was a while before Alex could talk, and when he did, all he could think to say was, "I think I got snot on your shirt."

Andrew didn't laugh out loud, but Alex could feel his shoulders shaking with it. "It'll wash. If you feel bad, you can take it to the laundrette."

"Yeah, that's fair," Alex said. He swiped at his eye again, tugged the patch back into place, and looked up at Andrew, meaning to thank him.

Instead, because he was obviously determined to be very, very stupid--he could blame the whiskey, but he didn't have a lot of illusions about his own brilliance--he kissed Andrew.

Andrew probably should have shoved Alex off the couch and told him to go to hell, but instead, Andrew kissed him back.

This was definitely not his Andrew. This Andrew, for one thing, wasn't very good at kissing, and Alex realized guiltily that he probably hadn't had a lot of chances for practice. But before Alex could apologize, Andrew took a deep breath, straightened his spine a little, and kissed Alex again, this time with a little more confidence.

"This probably isn't a good idea," Alex said after a moment.

"Probably not," Andrew agreed, "but since we've already done it, could we do it again?"

This wasn't his Andrew. This was never going to be his Andrew. But he'd been nothing but kind to Alex, and Alex liked him in spite of his best efforts not to, and he'd _asked_. Besides, it had been a while since Alex had kissed anyone, and it turned out he was starting to miss it.

So, since Andrew was right--the mistake had been made and repeating it wasn't likely to make things worse--Alex nodded and kissed him again, this time putting some effort into making it memorable for Andrew.

When he pulled away, Andrew's cheeks were faintly pink and his lips were red, so Alex must not have done too bad of a job.

"Thank you," Andrew said quietly. "You didn't have to do that."

Alex shrugged. "It was just a kiss," he said, but he slipped his arms around Andrew's waist, holding him close.

"I know. Thanks," he said again. Alex noticed that Andrew wasn't making an effort to move away from him, either.

He really should put a stop to this, Alex thought. He was a little drunk, and he was a lot miserable, and if there was anyone ever who might get the wrong idea from something like this, it was Andrew.

But Andrew was smiling at him, just a little, and it was so obvious to Alex that Andrew wanted Alex to kiss him again that he couldn't resist. And maybe for just a few minutes, Alex deserved to have one thing that didn't hurt.

Andrew brought a hand up to cup Alex's jaw. "Is this--is it okay? Or I could go to my room and we can pretend this didn't happen."

"Is that what you want?"

"No!" Andrew said. "I really don't. But I'm not the one--if one of us was going to have a problem with this, it wouldn't be me."

Maybe not, but just at the moment, Alex didn't have much of a problem with it either. He kissed Andrew again, hard and hungry, trying to lose himself in it. Maybe literally anyone else would have been a better choice for this, but no one else was here, and no one else--Xander excepted, and that was a special case--had done as much to make Alex feel welcome here, and so was this really such a bad idea?

Andrew was making little sighing noises into Alex's mouth, and his fingers stroked along Alex's jaw, rubbing over Alex's five-o'clock shadow.

"Sorry," Alex muttered. "If I'd realized this was going to happen, I could have shaved." His Andrew had always complained about whisker-burn.

"Don't be sorry. I like it." Andrew kept caressing his jaw, and then, with sudden boldness, kissed Alex. "It makes you look kind of dangerous."

He grinned; it almost felt normal. "There'd better not be a pirate comparison on its way."

"No. Pirates are boring." Another kiss; he was definitely getting more confident. "You're definitely not boring."

Alex decided he might as well enjoy not being boring. He ran his hands over Andrew's back, tracing the path of Andrew's spine through his shirt, while he explored Andrew's mouth with his tongue.

Andrew brought his free hand up between them, hesitantly touching Alex's chest. "Can I--" He paused for a moment. "Can I unbutton this? I, um. I want to touch you."

He nodded. "Yeah, you can." He pulled at Andrew's own shirt, untucking it from his pants, so that Alex could slide his hand under it. He sighed at the contact; it felt like it had been so long since he'd touched anyone like this.

Andrew unbuttoned Alex's shirt, slipping his hands inside. "You've got a lot of scars," he said, quietly.

Alex winced. "Sorry. I know they're not very pretty." 

A few scars weren't much compared to what had happened to everyone else he knew, though. If he'd been able to get stitched up by someone with more medical training than a Girl Scout first-aid badge, some of them might not even have scarred at all.

"No, that's not what I meant," Andrew said quickly. "I was just noticing. I don't mind them. I mean, not that it matters whether I mind them or not, but--"

Alex cut that off before Andrew started sounding any more distressed. "Something else to make me look dangerous?"

"Maybe." He traced along one of the longer scars with his fingertip, one that had been ripped open by a sharp-tipped demon claw. Then, to Alex's complete surprise, Andrew bent his head down, kissing along the path his finger had just taken.

"Hang on a second." Alex shrugged out of his shirt, then reached for the buttons on Andrew's. "Can I?"

Andrew squirmed awkwardly. "I guess. I mean, if you want to. I don't know why you would, but..."

"Same reason you wanted mine off: to make it easier to touch you." He shrugged. "I don't have to, if you don't want. But hey, it can't look any worse than this." He waved toward the scars on his chest.

There was another moment of hesitation, but then Andrew nodded. "Okay. Sure."

But he was still tense while Alex undid his shirt and pushed it down off his shoulders. It wasn't until Alex kissed him again, running his hands over Andrew's bare skin, that he started to relax a little.

Alex had to stop himself from saying anything. He didn't know how things had gone for Andrew in this world. Anything he could say would be based on the things _his_ Andrew had told him, and not only could that be wrong, it would be creepy as hell.

But he _could_ smile and murmur, "See? I like touching you," and feel the taut muscles relax further under his hands, and he could kiss Andrew again, slowly and deeply, while Andrew's own hands roamed over Alex's chest, clearly intent on exploring every inch of his skin.

"Do you like this?" Alex moved his hands to Andrew's chest, rubbing the pads of his thumbs over Andrew's nipples. He almost hoped Andrew wouldn't, for another point of difference from the Andrew he remembered, but he couldn't be too disappointed when Andrew moaned and arched his back.

"Oh, yes. Please, yes," Andrew whimpered, and Alex lowered his head and replaced one hand with his mouth, licking and lightly sucking at the hardening nipple.

Andrew sighed when Alex stopped to switch sides. "We should stop." 

He frowned. "Okay, if you want to. I thought you were enjoying this, though."

"I was. I am. But if we stop now, I won't be so disappointed when you want--well, when you don't actually want me."

"Okay," Alex said slowly, "but what if I do?"

Andrew shrugged, his shoulders staying hunched up around his ears, and Alex put his arms around him, pulling him close again.

"You don't," Andrew muttered, his head on Alex's shoulder. "You can't."

"I'm not making any big promises," Alex warned him. "But this, right here? Yeah. I can. I do. I know I've been a jerk to you ever since I got here, but I swear, I'm not the kind of jerk who'd lie about this."

He rubbed Andrew's back a little, hand moving in a slow circle. "I know you don't know me that well, but you can trust me with this, Andrew. I'm not--" He broke off; that was one of those things he wasn't supposed to know, if it even applied in this world anyway. "I'm not saying this to make fun of you, or hurt you. I didn't plan on this happening, but it _is_ something I want."

After a moment, Andrew nodded, though he still didn't look up.

"Hey, can you look at me?" Finally, Andrew looked up and gave Alex a watery smile. "That's better." He brushed a tear away from Andrew's cheek and kissed him. "It's up to you, but I'd like to pick back up where we left off a minute ago."

Andrew brightened. "Please," he said. "I liked that."

Alex started working his way down Andrew's neck again, back down to his chest, and returned his attention to Andrew's nipples. Andrew was much more vocal than the man Alex had known, moaning and whimpering at every flick of Alex's tongue. Alex let himself fall backward against the arm of the couch, tugging Andrew down on top of him.

Andrew's eyes flew open wide. "Alex?"

"Just getting comfortable," he said.

"I'm fine, I just-- um. Got startled." He shifted his weight, and Alex suddenly realized that Andrew was now pressed against his half-hard cock.

Alex grinned at him, hopefully in a reassuring manner. "I told you I wanted to do this. Believe me now?"

Andrew chewed on his bottom lip thoughtfully for a moment, then slid a hesitant hand in between their bodies and pressed it against the growing bulge in Alex's pants.

It was a struggle, but Alex managed to hold still. He didn't want to spook Andrew, and he didn't know how easy it would be to panic him. He knew how incredibly easy it had been at first in his own world, and he couldn't really go wrong assuming that things could go just as badly here, he figured.

Instead, he tried to relax, and gave Andrew another smile. "You can do that all you want."

"You may regret that," Andrew said. "I think I want to do it kind of a lot."

He grinned again. "I think I can cope with that." God, it was good to be able to joke around with someone, at least a little, to--not _forget_ how miserable he was and how much he'd lost, but to put it aside for a while and just have something _good_ for a few minutes. 

Good, like a weird-but-likable guy kissing him again, still softly and uncertainly, while his hand rubbed over Alex's stiffening cock.

"Am I doing okay?" Andrew asked. "I mean, I know it's ridiculous for me not to know--but it's not like there's a lot of opportunity, there's so much to be done at the Council and I haven't had time to, you know, go out and meet people. And I know I'm pretty much the least sexy person to ever walk the earth, so--"

"Yeah, no," Alex said. "Definitely not true. Are you Brad Pitt? Nope, but last I checked, neither was I. And you're doing _just fine_ , Andrew." He pressed upward a little, pushing into Andrew's hand. "Really fine. I promise. In fact, I'd like it _a lot_ if you went ahead with more touching."

He decided to let himself go ahead with more touching, too, hands moving in aimless patterns on Andrew's back, making mental notes of every spot where his touch made Andrew shiver happily, and going back to them again and again.

Alex's cock was now straining against the fabric of his pants; Andrew's hesitant touches had grown more confident, firmer, and Alex was starting to feel a little desperate for more. "You can--and this is just a statement, _not_ a demand, okay? But it would be okay with me if you wanted to get my pants open. If you want to keep touching me through my clothes, we can go with that, but. If you wanted."

Andrew actually laughed. "Was that your 'casual and disinterested' voice?"

"Kind of, yeah."

"It needs work. A lot of work."

"I'll try harder next time," Alex promised.

"You could just tell me what you want?"

Well, okay, since Andrew _asked_. "I really want your hand on my cock," he said, and watched Andrew's eyes go wide in surprise.

But Andrew was also giving him a dazzling grin, so it obviously wasn't the bad kind of surprise. His fingers went to the button of Alex's pants, clumsily undoing it, and then tugged down the zipper.

Then he hesitated, so Alex said, "You don't have to, just because I want it."

Andrew nodded. "Yeah, but I want to. We're good, don't worry so much." He reached inside Alex's underwear and took his cock out, surveying it thoughtfully. "Let me know if I do something that you don't like?"

Alex nodded. Andrew's quite serious scrutiny wasn't doing _anything_ to make him want to feel Andrew's hand on him any less. Definitely the opposite, in fact, to the point where he was having trouble imagining Andrew doing anything to him he wouldn't like.

Andrew's first touch was a little hesitant still, just trailing his fingers along Alex's length, brushing the tip of his index finger against the tip where a drop of fluid was beading up. Then he regained that confidence he'd developed earlier and wrapped his hand around Alex and began to slide it up and down.

Alex decided that Andrew deserved a little--or a lot of--encouragement. "That's right," he said. "Not so gentle, though. I like-- yeah, that's perfect," he said, as Andrew tightened his grip, stroking him more firmly. Then he tugged Andrew down again, close enough for more kisses.

Andrew's smile was going to break his damn heart, so he closed his eyes for a minute, focusing on the way Andrew's hand felt touching him instead of the familiarity of his face. And it felt good, it felt great, it was so much better than getting himself off in the shower, and while it was obvious that the only dick Andrew had ever touched before was his own, that didn't really matter; Alex wasn't going to last very long.

Then Andrew stopped, and in spite of himself, Alex whined, "Why? Don't--" He broke off when he opened his eyes to see Andrew, his own eyes closed, his hand pressed against his own cock as he drew in a slow, shuddering breath.

"C'mere," he said, reaching for Andrew.

"Just a minute, " Andrew said, his voice shaking, "or I'm going to--"

"Yeah, I know," he interrupted. "Get your pants open, and come here so I can help with that."

"Oh. God. Yes." Andrew complied swiftly, letting Alex pull him down to lie on top of him again.

Alex let his hands slide down to Andrew's ass, holding him in place as Alex began to move against him. "How does that feel?" he asked, though the fact that Andrew was responding, thrusting against him, was probably enough of an answer.

That was probably good, because as verbal answers went, "Yes," wasn't all that coherent, although at least the meaning was clear. "Yes, please, yes," Andrew sobbed; Alex felt his whole body tense before he shuddered and came against Alex's hip.

Alex's own cock was throbbing; he reached between them again and started jerking himself off, but Andrew's hand closed over his.

"I want to," Andrew said, his voice sounding soft and kind of blissed-out; and how was Alex supposed to say no to that? He let his hand fall to his side.

It only took a few more strokes of Andrew's hand before Alex came, too; afterward, he lay there on Andrew's couch, Andrew a comfortable weight on his chest. Just for a minute, he thought; then he'd get up so they could get cleaned up.

That was the last thought he had for a while.

Alex wasn't sure what time it was when he finally woke up, only that it was dark and that Andrew had draped a blanket over him before, presumably, going off to his own bedroom. He sat up--doing up his pants before he started feeling completely ridiculous--poured himself another drink, and knocked it back.

He might have been doing that too often in recent months, because he didn't even cough.

Well. Given all the evidence, he was going to have to assume that what happened earlier that evening hadn't just been a very interesting dream.

Shit. He'd had sex with Andrew.

No, that made it sound too damn reasonable. He'd gotten drunk and depressed and then had sex with the one person in this or any dimension he should never, ever have even thought about having sex with. Given the circumstances, it would have been a shitty thing to do with anyone, but _Andrew_? It'd be a miracle if he didn't leave Andrew with a shiny new layer of psychological damage with "Alexander Harris" written all over it.

God, he was such an _asshole._

He was also a really tired asshole, though, so he refilled his glass one last time and carried it with him into his room. He'd deal with this disaster--or try not to deal with it, probably--in the morning.

****

Everything most definitely did not look better in the morning.

Everything looked too damn bright and tasted like Alex had licked the inside of a public garbage can, but that was probably just the hangover and not the guilt. A handful of ibuprofen, gulped down with several glasses of water from the bathroom tap and followed by some really aggressive tooth-brushing, did a little to help with that, and would probably do more once the meds kicked in.

He stumbled out to the kitchen, drawn by the smell of coffee. Andrew--already dressed for work--turned slightly pink when Alex walked in, and Alex winced. Yeah, he'd really fucked things up.

"I've got to go," Andrew said, "but there's still at least enough coffee for two cups. And you probably don't want to think about food right now, but I thought I'd pick up a takeaway on the way home tonight, so let me know at some point today if you want something, okay?" 

He smiled at Alex. "No problem if you don't. I'm not trying to, you know, make yesterday into something it isn't. I'd have asked you if you wanted food before that, really. I just thought maybe--"

Alex felt sick, and it probably wasn't entirely from the hangover. "Andrew," he said, cutting into the nervous flow of words. "About yesterday. Can we--" He sighed. "Can we just pretend that didn't happen?"

Andrew's face fell. "Yeah, sure. Of course we can. Like I said, I wasn't trying to make it into anything, so that'll be just... That'll be just fine." He left the kitchen, still talking as he headed for the door. "Great, even. Perfect. And I really have to go now, or I'll be late. There's a meeting, and Mr. Giles is depending on me to take minutes, and..." His voice was cut off by the closing of the front door.

Alex poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the tiny kitchen table, staring down at it.

"Well," he said out loud, "you couldn't have fucked that up better if you tried."

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:** The Council works out what's causing all the strange phenomena. It's not good news, because when is it ever?


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Council works out what's causing all the strange phenomena. It's not good news, because when is it ever?

****

Alex couldn't wait until his paperwork was finished; Giles had been giving him a lot of busywork to do--no, that wasn't really fair. It was stuff that needed to be done, but had been allowed to pile up because it wasn't either urgent or interesting. Alex wanted to get out into the field, doing the kind of work he was more comfortable with, not stuck behind a desk.

Besides, once everything was more settled and he got a more permanent work assignment, he'd be able to get his own apartment somewhere. He'd spent the past several days doing everything he could to avoid having awkward conversations with Andrew. It hadn't been that hard--he and Xander had gotten together a few times, and Willow had arrived again on Friday, called back in by the team working on determining the source of the anomalies, so the two of them had spent Saturday evening together.

It was nice, having someone like Willow in his life again. She wasn't quite the same as the woman he'd grown up with, but she was similar enough that they got along well. He'd found himself telling her about Andrew, finally--not the one she knew, but back in his world--and maybe he shouldn't have been all that surprised that she understood how he felt. 

"Compared to me," she'd said, with a wry smile, "you're handling things really well, you know." Alex assumed that meant there had been a Tara in this world, and Willow hadn't reacted to her death any better than his Willow had.

But it was Monday now, and everyone was busy; he was going to have to go back to the apartment at a reasonable hour this evening, and either very pointedly avoid Andrew again, or sit there and feel like the world's worst jackass because of what happened the other night.

Especially since he suspected that if Andrew asked him, he'd agree that they could do it again, and he couldn't take that risk. He didn't want to hurt Andrew any more than he had.

So Alex was relieved when Giles called him and asked him to come to the office for a meeting. "It's rather important," Giles said; "Willow has found some answers."

Well, that sounded--maybe not good, but interesting, and a lot better than going through and comparing the digitized versions of Council documents with the originals, a job that was apparently best left to someone who had no idea what the documents were talking about in the first place. 

"If you have no idea what it means," Lambert had pointed out when Alex had argued that he couldn't even understand half the documents, even the ones supposedly in English, "you won't be mentally filling in what you think it _should_ say."

And apparently, it was a pretty big meeting: Lambert and Mackenzie were there, since they'd been part of the investigation from the outset; Giles and Xander, of course; Willow, also "of course"; but there were a handful of other Watchers as well. And, probably also "of course" but Alex hadn't really considered it when Giles had called him: Andrew, who gave him a tentative little smile but didn't approach him.

Giles called the meeting to order, and people found chairs and settled down. There weren't quite enough seats, so Alex stayed at the back of the room, leaning against the edge of a bookcase. He'd been sitting all day as it was. At least this way he could stretch his legs a little without drawing attention to himself.

Lambert brought everyone up to speed on the nature of the problem and what had been done so far to investigate. It felt like a waste of time to Alex, but since some of the unfamiliar Watchers were taking notes, maybe it wasn't, for them. Regardless, he was glad when she finished up with, "Given that we determined that the anomalies are magical in nature, we consulted with Ms. Rosenberg, hoping that her expertise could shed some light on the situation."

"And, well, it has," Willow said, getting to her feet. "To the best of my knowledge, these anomalies are the result of dimensional instability. Things are disappearing, changing, suddenly appearing, because some other dimension is overlapping ours and imposing its reality on our own."

"What do you mean?" asked Mackenzie, a question for which Alex was extremely grateful. He didn't have any idea what Willow was talking about either.

"I mean that another dimension--one of the dimensions that's different from our own only in some relatively small way--is bleeding through. There's a... not a tear, exactly, but a place where our reality is stretched thin, and it's allowing some of the other nearby realities to slip in. So someone sees a ghost--because a person who's dead in our dimension is alive in another one, and temporarily stumbles into ours. Or a building disappears--because there's a vacant lot there in the dimension that's bleeding through.

She flipped through a notepad for a moment. "Almost all the stuff you guys have flagged can be explained that way, and the number keeps increasing. Not only that, but the instability seems to be getting more serious. Disappearances or appearances last longer, affect a larger area--basically, our reality is being ripped apart."

Willow's voice had been calm and confident the entire time, but Alex had been watching her face. She was worried.

No, she was _scared_. She was just holding herself together really well.

"Do we know what's causing it?" Xander asked, and Willow sighed.

"Unfortunately, we do," she said. "Or at least, we have a pretty good idea. We've known for some years that travel between these dimensions is possible. I mean, that's how we get demons, but also, we've seen travel to and from dimensions that only differ from this one in minor ways."

"Like when we were in high school, and vampire-you showed up in Sunnydale?" Xander said.

"Yeah, like that. She wasn't here long, and so there wasn't any harm done. There was probably a little extra weirdness while she was around, but in Sunnydale, who would notice?"

Alex laughed a little, quietly; she definitely wasn't wrong there.

"But if someone from another dimension came here--from another dimension that really is just an alternate version of this one, not from one of the other, completely different, realities," Willow continued, "and stayed for a long time, and _especially_ if a version of that person was already here, alive, in this dimension..." She shrugged. "Things would start getting a lot weirder. And the longer they stayed, the further the effects would spread, and the worse they would get. Until our reality is permanently damaged by it."

"Damaged how?" Giles said.

"Damaged, as in a nice way to say 'pretty much destroyed.' This dimension will still be here, but reality wouldn't be. It'd be pure chaos, different dimensions imposing their realities on top of this one, changing all the time."

She was silent for a moment, letting that sink in.

"How can you be sure that's what's happening?" asked one of the Watchers Alex didn't know.

Willow looked over in his direction, but didn't say anything. Maybe she didn't want to call him out, to blame him for this even though it was his fault. Not intentionally, but still, his fault.

Alex took a deep breath. "Because we know that someone from another dimension has been here since around the time the instability started," he said. When the others turned to look at him, he waved at them. "I'm not exactly Xander's twin brother. I'm him. From another dimension that I can't go back to."

The minute he'd said it, he wondered if he'd made a huge mistake. This wasn't the old Council, but still, what if they decided the easiest way to deal with the problem was to eliminate the source of the instability? 

Well, hell. By all rights, Alex ought to be dead anyway, along with everyone else he knew. If he'd managed to get another month of life--decent, safe, almost happy life--that was more than anyone could really ask for.

Besides, Buffy was sure there was an afterlife, and maybe that meant he'd find Andrew again.

Giles broke the silence. "We'd appreciate your keeping that information to yourselves," he said. "You've been invited here partly on the basis of our feeling you can be trusted with it."

"And I've started researching spells that can sever the last connections between Alex and his home dimension, which should stop the instability," Willow cut in. "We need to do it as soon as we can so that there's no lasting damage done here, but we have a little time. Things aren't at a crisis point yet, and there are some things we can do to temporarily reduce the effects of the instability while we work." 

She turned to the group of unfamiliar Watchers. "That's why you're all here. You're our experts in magical and dimensional theory. You're all going to be reassigned to my team for the time being."

"What if we can't cut those connections?" asked one of the Watchers, a little old man who looked like he'd escaped the First by having retired twenty years ago.

"And there it is," Alex murmured to himself. Xander and Andrew both seemed to have reached the same conclusion Alex had, and turned to look at him again. He shrugged a little and mouthed, _What can you do?_

"We will," Willow said flatly. "But we're also working on some contingency plans, just in case."

The old man nodded. "I'll want to hear about those before I decide whether I can support this."

"Of course, Preston," Giles said, "and you'll be given all the details, obviously. In fact, given your work with dimensional portals, your help will be invaluable in both the main thrust of our research and those contingency plans."

Alex put up a hand. "Do I get to know what those are?"

"Of course," Giles said. "I'd forgotten we didn't have a chance to fill you in ahead of time. But if I could wrap this up first?"

Okay. Alex could wait. The plans were almost definitely not killing him. Probably. If it was necessary, Giles would definitely do it, but he wouldn't be talking about it in front of Xander, because Xander probably wouldn't be okay with it.

Xander would definitely not be okay with it. Xander had come over and was standing next to Alex now. It was comforting to know that somebody had his back, even if it was just himself.

Giles finished wrapping up the meeting, giving some more instructions to the other Watchers. Most of them left with Willow after a few minutes; Alex heard her saying something about "hitting the ground running" as they walked past him and Xander.

A few minutes later, the only ones left in the room were Giles, Xander, Alex himself, the little old man who'd asked about the contingency plans, and, of course, Andrew.

Alex forced a smile at Giles. "I'm hoping that 'kill me and everything will sort itself out' is pretty far down the list of contingency plans."

"It is," Giles assured him.

"Nobody's going to kill you," Xander said firmly. "That's not on the table."

Alex frowned at him, though he knew that it wasn't really that long ago that he'd have seen it the same way. "I definitely don't want it to happen," he said, "but if it's that or this entire dimension, then..." He sighed. "I'm one guy who doesn't even belong here. Everyone who cares about me is dead."

"That's not true," Andrew protested, and Alex winced. Andrew probably just meant the thing where he was Xander's duplicate. At least, Alex hoped that what was going on. It would be a disaster if Andrew got too attached.

"You barely know me," Alex reminded him. "Anyway, what's higher up on the list?"

"That's where Dr. Preston here comes in," Giles said. "He's our leading authority on dimensional portals."

"I can't open them, though," Preston said modestly. "No magical talent."

"That's why you'll be working with Miss Rosenberg," Giles said. "You and she are going to attempt to duplicate the portal spell that the Willow Rosenberg in Alex's home dimension cast." He turned to Alex. "We'll send you through with a copy of all of Willow's research up until that point, with the idea that you'll seek out the Council in that dimension and get them to pick up the research where we left off. Hopefully with that head start, she'd be able to stabilize the situation before it reaches a dangerous point."

Alex nodded. As ideas went, he'd heard a lot worse. "And if not, their Willow opens another portal for me and I start again in another dimension?"

Giles nodded. "As I've said, it's only a contingency plan. I have every confidence in our ability to solve the problem before it becomes necessary."

"It might not be so bad," Alex said, trying not to look in Andrew's direction when he said it. "I mean, as a last resort." He'd make sure he stayed well away from that dimension's Andrew, too. He wasn't going to repeat the mistake he'd made here.

"We have some time, right?" Xander said. "I mean, the instability isn't spreading that fast, and it hasn't been dangerous yet."

"We have a little time, yes," Giles confirmed. "But the sooner this is solved, the better--for our dimension, and for whatever dimensions are bleeding through into this one."

"Willow will fix it," Xander said loyally. Then, to Alex, "It's going to be okay."

"I know," he said, because either Willow would succeed, or Alex would get to start over again in a dimension where he hadn't already screwed things up.

****

Two days later, Alex still hadn't thought of any better way to handle things than to avoid Andrew. Not that it was a good way to handle anything, especially not when they were sharing an apartment. On Monday, he'd gone out and gotten something to eat at a cafe, staying out until it was late enough that he could justify going straight to his room when he got home. Yesterday Andrew had left a note saying that he had things to do after work, and Alex should get dinner on his own.

Whatever friendship they'd been developing in the past few weeks was gone. For two men who'd agreed that the best strategy was pretending that nothing had ever happened between them, it was really obvious that _something_ had happened. 

He hadn't realized that it was obvious to other people, though, until Xander came in to drag him out to lunch. 

"God, they have you doing all the boring jobs," he said. Alex was still working on the digitizing project, though it felt like if he stared at any more poorly-scanned text, his eyes would cross. "Ask Andrew if he can find you something more interesting to do. It's about time Lambert passed this job on to somebody she doesn't like."

"I'm not going to bother Andrew with this," Alex said, as they walked down the hall to the stairwell.

Xander frowned. "It seemed like you and Andrew were getting along better for a while there. What happened?"

"We were getting along better for a while there," Alex admitted. Xander was in front of him going down the stairs, and it was a lot easier to talk to his back than to his face. "That's the problem."

"I knew it!" Xander said, his voice echoing through the stairwell. "Rupert thinks I'm ridiculous--he says Andrew's always weird about things. He's not wrong, but Andrew doesn't usually turn red at the mention of someone's name."

"It's not a big deal," Alex said.

"You check that with Andrew?"

"Yes, actually. He agreed with me. It wasn't a big deal, it was a mistake, and it's not happening again." They'd reached the ground floor, and he followed Xander out into what had turned out to be a bright, sunny autumn day. The kind of day that sort of made Alex glad that he was alive, and here.

"That's not what it looked like." Xander paused while Alex drew level with him; then they started walking again. "You going to tell me what actually happened, or do I get it out of Andrew?"

"It's not really any of your business, is it?"

"Andrew's my friend, and I don't want to see him get hurt. And you're my clone from a parallel universe, and my fake brother, so I don't want to see you get hurt, either. Besides," Xander said, "if it isn't a big deal, it's not a big deal to tell me, is it?"

Alex sighed. "I got drunk the other day."

Xander's eye narrowed. "You really think that was a good idea?"

"No," he said, "but I dare you to come up with a better way to deal with finding out that one stupid conversation could have saved your entire world." Xander was still frowning at him, so he went on, "I'm not turning into Dad. But can you really tell me you wouldn't need something to help you cope?"

"That's what you have friends for, dumbass."

"Yeah, well, _all my friends are dead_." He glared at Xander, who, to his credit, winced and backed down.

"I thought maybe we were becoming your friends," he said. "That's what I meant. But it was a shitty thing for me to say, and I'm sorry."

Alex shrugged. "It's okay. If it makes you feel better, I already decided that cutting back on the booze was a good plan."

"It does," Xander admitted. "But go on. You got drunk. That was what, about a week ago?"

He nodded. "I was upset, and Andrew was trying to make me feel better. I wound up crying all over his shirt," he said, grimacing at the memory. "And then... things got out of hand."

"Meaning you had sex."

Alex shrugged. "Yeah," he said, finally. He didn't like admitting that to himself, let alone to this reality's Xander. He'd taken advantage of a lonely and vulnerable Andrew, just because he was miserable. Just because Andrew was as close as he was ever going to get to the man he loved, ever again. 

Well. Maybe if Buffy was right about Heaven, but in spite of everything, Alex wasn't actually ready to die.

It wasn't something to be proud of.

But Xander didn't look any more disappointed than he had when Alex had said he got drunk. "And the problem is...?"

"Everything," Alex said. "I shouldn't have done that."

"Because you didn't want to?"

"No." No, he'd wanted to. Even reminding himself that this wasn't his Andrew hadn't changed that. He'd felt so damn alone, and he'd wanted one good thing to hold onto. As bizarre as that would have seemed to him just a few years ago, Andrew--even this Andrew--could be that, at least for him.

"Because he didn't want to?"

"No! Jesus, how could you think that I'd--"

"I don't," Xander said. "You're essentially me. I can be an asshole, but not like that." They stopped at a street corner, waiting for the signal to change. "But my point is, you wanted to, he wanted to. You're adults."

"I took advantage of him." Alex stared impatiently at the signal, willing it to change. Anything to get out of this conversation.

"Hey, you were the one who was drinking. If anybody got taken advantage of--"

"I wasn't that drunk." He wanted to add "and Andrew wouldn't," but he couldn't be sure of that, not in this reality. He wouldn't have been sure of _his_ Andrew back when Andrew was one of Warren's little gang, and he didn't know this Andrew well enough to be sure of him now.

This Andrew _hadn't_ , though; that much, Alex could be sure of. "Anyway, that's not what I meant." Finally, they could cross the street, bringing them that much closer to the restaurant, where maybe Xander would drop the damn subject.

"What did you mean, then?"

"He's vulnerable."

Xander snorted. "And because you're such a big strong handsome man, there was just no way Andrew was going to say no? Are you forgetting who we're talking about here? This is Andrew. He managed to drag himself out of sleazy third-rate villainosity into, eventually, being a decent human being. Andrew isn't going to do anything that he doesn't want to." 

They turned a corner, and Xander stopped in front of the restaurant. "So maybe, before you go around beating yourself up for whatever you guys did, you might want to re-evaluate with that in mind."

It didn't change things, Alex told himself as he followed Xander inside. It was still a terrible idea to get involved with Andrew, of all people, and he'd have to make sure it didn't happen again.

But maybe Xander was right, and it was just the kind of mistake people made all the time, sleeping with the wrong person. Not anything he needed to feel bad about. Not anything that was going to hurt Andrew.

And maybe that meant it was something he could live with, in the end.

****

"I'd have ordered something for you," Andrew said, digging into the carton of Chinese food, "but I didn't know that you were going to be done avoiding me yet."

Alex grimaced. "Okay, I earned that." He'd be fine eating cereal.

"Are you?"

"Am I what?" He poured cereal into a bowl and went to the fridge to get the milk.

"Done avoiding me."

"Oh." He took his bowl of cereal over to the table and sat down. "Uh, yeah. All done."

"It's about time," Andrew said. "What even was that crap? I thought we were adults."

He shrugged. "I'm eating Cocoa Puffs from a bowl with a cartoon robot at the bottom. You _bought_ the Cocoa Puffs and the robot bowl--"

"They had a set of four at the pound shop," Andrew protested, "and I wanted something I couldn't break if I fell asleep in front of the TV and dropped it."

"All I'm saying is that our adulthood could legitimately be called into question," Alex said. "So 'that crap' is probably not an unexpected thing." Then he sighed. "But it was definitely crap, and I'm definitely sorry about it. You deserved better than that."

"Damn right I did," Andrew said, picking up a piece of broccoli with his chopsticks. "You know, I wasn't expecting... well, anything other than what happened. But I had kind of figured you'd be willing to talk to me afterwards."

"I should have," he admitted. "But I already screwed things up for one Andrew. I didn't want to think that I might have done it for another one."

"How did you screw things up for him?" Andrew said. "It sounded like you guys were happy together."

"Until he got killed, because I didn't have the one conversation that might have let us stop the apocalypse."

"That's not your fault."

"I know that." Intellectually, at least, he did. There was no guarantee that they'd have been able to put those clues together--no guarantee that they'd even gotten the information in time in his reality. It didn't stop him from feeling guilty.

"Besides," Andrew said, "do you really think he regretted it?"

"Yeah," Alex said. "I think he regretted being ripped in half by a demon. I think he regretted that a lot."

"That's not what I meant."

"Yeah, I know." He focused on eating his cereal for a minute; it was a lot easier than looking Andrew in the eye. "And I don't know if he regretted things. If it would have meant he'd have lived longer--"

"He wouldn't have regretted being part of the Council," Andrew said firmly. "If I died tomorrow, as a direct result of my job, I still wouldn't regret it. It's the first thing I've ever done that was actually good. Not just 'not bad,' but making the world a better place. Helping people." 

Then he shrugged and looked down at his plate. "And I don't know about the other thing. But I think--and you've got to admit, if anyone could make an educated guess, it'd be me--that I'd rather have had somebody in my life than been alone. Even if I could have been alone until I was eighty."

They weren't the same man, this Andrew and the one Alex had been in love with. Would always be in love with. But they were close enough that Alex could let himself believe what Andrew was saying. "Okay," he said after a moment. "I believe you."

"And for me..." He shrugged again, still not meeting Alex's eyes. "Something is better than nothing," he said finally. "Maybe I don't get to have what he had--I don't mean you, specifically," he added quickly. "Just... maybe I don't get to have anybody. But I got to have something, and a guy could do a lot worse than that. A guy could do a lot worse than you."

Alex snorted. "Yeah, he really could. I mean, there are vampires and slime demons and all kinds of stuff out there. A fully-human jerk is a real improvement."

"You're only a jerk sometimes," Andrew said. "I've had worse roommates."

"We can put that on my tombstone," Alex said. "'Here lies Alexander Harris. There were worse roommates.'"

But he felt better after that, and he thought maybe Andrew did, too.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:** Alex is running out of time.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex is running out of time.

****

Willow frowned down at the file in front of her. "Another disappearance. That's two in the past three days."

"The first one was a dog," Giles said. "It may have just run off."

"From the owner's statement," Andrew said, rummaging through his copy of the file for the eyewitness report, "do you really think it's likely? She gave a precise description of a point of dimensional instability without knowing that was what she was doing."

"We're going to have to find a way to seal the portals," Alex said.

"What do you think we've been doing for the past couple of weeks?" Willow glared at him in a way that reminded him of having asked her for the geometry homework one too many times. 

They were sitting around the small conference table in Giles' office, just the five of them--Xander, of course, making up the fifth. Preston, the guy who was working with Willow on the portal spell and their attempts to seal off the dimensional instability, was supposed to be there, but he'd gone up to Edinburgh to try to get his hands on a reference book he thought would be useful.

"Yeah, I know," he said. "But what I was going to say is that we're going to have to find a way to seal off the instability _now_ , or we're going to have to go with plan B." He didn't want to be sent off to another dimension. If he couldn't go home--and he knew he couldn't--then this was a good alternative. He had friends. In a very weird way, he had family. Things could have been a lot worse.

But he also knew the second disappearance had been a human being, accidentally trapped in another dimension when the connection between it and this reality had flickered out, and he didn't want any more of that on his conscience.

"I'm not giving up yet," Willow insisted. "Dr. Preston and I have made a lot of progress. No, we can't seal off the instability yet, but we're a lot closer than we were two weeks ago. With a little more time--"

"We don't have a little more time," Alex argued. "Maybe the guy who disappeared is safe. Maybe he's not. Depends on the dimension he wound up in. But either way, he's in some strange place, cut off from his friends and family, so either way, it's definitely not okay. And it's my fault."

"Alex has a point," Giles said. "We're risking human lives as long as we let the instability remain. Soon, the risk is going to be too large to tolerate. You've worked out how to open up a new portal using a spell like the one used to bring Alex here in the first place, so--"

"Yeah," Willow said, "but if we send him to another dimension, we're just passing the problem on to them and putting the people in _that_ dimension at risk. Maybe still people here, too, depending on whether or not ours is one of the dimensions that wind up bleeding through to theirs. This is our problem. Shouldn't we do everything we can do to try and solve it ourselves?"

"I think Willow has a point," Andrew said. That surprised Alex; Andrew brought up facts from his research--like the evidence to suggest that dog had gotten stuck in another dimension--but he'd been staying out of the debate about whether or not it was time to cut their losses and send Alex through a portal.

Alex had appreciated that. As much as he was going to keep arguing that it was time for him to go, he didn't want to, and it was somewhat comforting to be able to tell himself that the person he spent most of his time with didn't want him to go, either. Andrew speaking up might burst that bubble.

Andrew telling him off had done something--dislodged Alex's head from his ass, maybe--and Alex had even started, over the past week or so, to feel comfortable around Andrew. 

He'd started thinking of him as just "Andrew," instead of "the other Andrew" or "not his Andrew," just like he might have if he'd wound up sharing an apartment with Andrew Jones from Cardiff, instead of Andrew Wells from California. He had some things in common with Alex's Andrew, but thinking about them as totally separate people made hanging out with Andrew less painful.

Even fun. Even--the incident from a couple of weeks ago hadn't been repeated, and Alex thought that was probably for the best, but sometimes, he was starting to wonder if maybe it ought to be repeated. Not now, but--if he was still around then--in a few weeks, maybe even a couple of months. He hadn't really decided about that; it was hard to make plans for the future when it was completely up in the air as to whether or not he was even going to have one, at least in this reality.

And so Alex wouldn't really have wanted to hear Andrew arguing the case for sending him through that portal ASAP, even if he completely agreed.

"We're listening," Xander said. "I mean, yeah, Willow has a point, but unfortunately, so does Alex, so why do we go with Willow's idea and not his?"

"Because even if we send all our notes with Alex, it'll mean losing time. He'll have to find us--that was easy here, but there's no guarantee it will be there--or someone else who can help. It'll take them some time to get up to speed."

Willow nodded enthusiastically, leaning forward in her chair. "I think we're very close to solving the problem," she said. "Forty-eight hours here is going to be a lot more productive than forty-eight hours in another dimension, because we're already working on the solution."

"Forty-eight hours?" Giles said. "You really believe you're that close to being able to stabilize the dimensions?" When she nodded, he turned to Alex. "I believe we should give them that time," he said. "If Willow is really only two days from a workable solution, that's better than two days, plus whatever time it takes our counterparts in the next dimension to get started."

"But that dimension would have less damage," Alex said. "Two days here could be disastrous."

"I don't think so," Xander said. "I mean, I don't understand the math, but the last projections Lambert made--it's spreading, and the rate is increasing, but not that fast."

Willow spent a minute or two typing and clicking on her laptop, then nodded. "Xander's right. It's an exponential progression, so it gets very big very fast, but in two days, it'll still be small enough that removing the source of the instability would completely correct it."

"What about in three days?" Alex said.

"Exponential," she repeated. "At that point I couldn't be sure that there wouldn't be some permanent damage. And in four days... if that's the option we're going for, let's just not wait four days."

Giles nodded. "What about your work on duplicating the portal spell?"

"It's ready," she said. "We can't be a hundred percent sure about it without sending someone through it, but Preston is really good at reverse-engineering spells from residual magic even if he can't actually cast them himself, and we're both confident that it's going to work."

"What if someone other than you was casting it?"

She frowned a little. "Do they have time to prepare?"

"Forty-eight hours," Giles said. "I want you and Preston working on stabilizing the instability until the last possible minute, but as soon as that time is up..."

"I need to be ready to go," Alex finished for him.

"Yes," Giles agreed. "I don't want to do it, but we're going to have to prepare for the possibility, especially as there's no guarantee that Willow's team will find a workable solution."

Alex couldn't argue with that. "I'd better start packing."

"We'll get there," Willow said firmly. "You won't have to go anywhere. I mean, unless you want to?"

He shook his head. "No. If I can't go home--and I can't--then given the choice, I'd stay here. But not if it means putting this dimension at risk."

"We'll fix it," she said. "See? Determined face." She gestured toward herself, and Xander and Alex both laughed.

"Never underestimate the power of Willow's determined face," Xander said, and Alex couldn't argue with that.

All the same, he'd pack up most of his stuff tonight, just in case.

****

"You're really not expecting this to work, are you?" Andrew was standing in the doorway to Alex's room, watching as Alex packed up a sturdy hiking backpack he'd just bought at a sporting goods store.

"Willow's plan to stop the instability with me still in this dimension? Not really." 

They were down to eleven hours left of the forty-eight Giles had given her, and Alex had decided that it was time to assume she wasn't going to make it. 

He didn't know what kind of situation he'd find on the other side, or how long it'd be before he found a friendly face, so he was planning for the possibility of having to rough it for a while; along with a couple of changes of clothes and the inevitable stakes and holy water, his backpack contained protein bars, a lightweight blanket, a small first-aid kit, and other stuff he thought might be useful. 

Money, too, on the off chance it didn't get immediately flagged as counterfeit. The money here looked close enough to what he'd been used to that there was a chance it wouldn't. 

"So you're just giving up?"

He shook his head as he zipped up the backpack and leaned it against the bed. "What else can I do? I don't know how to fix this, so the only useful thing I can do is prepare for the trip. Maybe I won't need it, in which case I'll buy you dinner tonight and then you can help me unpack."

"I'm going to hold you to that," Andrew said. His voice sounded a little shaky. "Because you're not going anywhere."

"Hope for the best, plan for the worst, right?" Alex said, trying to sound cheerful. "And look on the bright side, if I do go, you get your spare room back."

"I don't even need a spare room. I'd have advertised for a flatmate ages ago except that I don't want to get some innocent bystander accidentally caught up in Council business," he argued. "I like not being alone all the time." Then Andrew sighed. "Not that it matters. Even if you stay in this dimension, you're not planning on staying in London, so my spare room would be empty soon enough anyway."

"I might," Alex said without thinking, then realized it was true. "I'm feeling a lot less need to run away and hide these days. I mean, I'd move out of your spare room if you want, or at least start paying rent. But I'm not so sure I want to leave London." It depended on what the Council could find for him to do. If it was just going through ancient files day after day, he might want a field assignment after all.

But Xander had mentioned more than once that he and Giles both thought Alex might deserve a less stressful job assignment for a while before going into the field, so if he brought it up, they might think of something.

If he was going to be staying, that was. Unfortunately, that didn't seem all that likely.

Andrew looked at his watch. "I should probably get going," he said. "Mr. Giles is going to be wondering where I am."

"Play hooky with me," Alex suggested on a whim. When Andrew didn't answer immediately, he added, "It's probably my last day here. At around seven o'clock tonight, I'm going to get sent to another dimension. If there was ever an excuse to skip work and hang out with me, this is it."

Andrew hesitated for another few seconds. "Isn't there someone else you'd want to spend the day with?"

"Not really, no." No one in this dimension, no one alive, and those two combined to mean "no one." "I asked you because I wanted to spend the time with you. You can say no, but..."

Andrew was already getting out his mobile phone. "Mr. Giles? Is there anything urgent you need me for today?" After a moment, he went on to say, "Alex and I are going to be doing some sightseeing, then. I'll have my phone, so if Willow and Mr. Preston come up with a solution, you can let me know. Otherwise, we'll be at the office around six?"

He put his phone back in his pocket and beamed at Alex. "It's all set."

"I heard," Alex said. "Sightseeing? Really?"

"Yes. You haven't done much of anything in the last month except hang around the apartment or Council HQ. This may be your last chance to see London."

"I lived in London for three years," Alex pointed out. "I've seen it."

"Not this London," Andrew argued. "Anyway, you wanted to spend the day with me. Did you have other plans?"

He hadn't, really. Staying in, watching DVDs? Not really that memorable, and he wanted Andrew to remember him. "We'll go sightseeing," he agreed. "Bring on your best tourist traps."

And, he realized, he hadn't ever really done a lot of sightseeing in his London, either. They'd been getting settled and getting the Council re-established, and then he and Andrew had been working and spending a lot of their weekends at home, and then everything had gone to hell.

So while he'd seen some London landmarks, he hadn't really paid attention to them.

After the first hour or so of their "tour," he realized that Andrew hadn't either, but he was clearly throwing himself into doing it now. 

"I keep saying I'm going to do this properly," Andrew said, looking at the guidebook he'd actually had on the bookshelf, stuffed with post-it flags and full of notes in Andrew's handwriting, "but I never do. It's not so much fun to do it alone."

Alex grinned. "So where do we go now? The Tower of London? Something Ye Olde English and Shakespearean?" They'd started at Big Ben, but whether that was because they were working to a plan or because it was the first thing he'd thought of, Alex wasn't sure.

And he didn't really care either way. This wasn't really about seeing the sights of London. If Alex had wanted to do that, he could have done it any time in the past month. Or in his own London, when he'd lived there.

It was about spending the day with Andrew. He didn't want to come right out and say what he was thinking--that if he'd been able to stay here, he would have been trying to spend a lot more time in Andrew's company. Maybe even going so far as to calling it dating Andrew, if that was okay with Andrew.

There wasn't any point in saying it, because in just a few hours, he'd be leaving this dimension, and he'd never be coming back. Admitting that yeah, he'd actually begun to welcome Andrew's company instead of avoiding it? That was just going to make it worse, and he didn't want to dump that on Andrew. Or, to be honest, on himself.

So this was just about two guys, two friends, going around like tourists. Enjoying the day.

"I don't know," Andrew admitted. "I mean, you've probably seen all this stuff before in your dimension, right? You and... and him."

"Nah. He never tried to show me around London," Alex said. When Andrew brightened noticeably, he was even glad it was true. "This was all your idea."

"The Tower, then?" Andrew suggested. "Let me see how to get there from here."

"Sure thing," Alex said, but then paused. "Hey, Andrew? You know you don't have to try to... impress me, or whatever this is."

"I know," Andrew said. "You're leaving soon, and anyway, even if you don't, it's not like I'm all that impressive."

"No," Alex said. "I mean that I'm already impressed. You've been a really good friend to me even when I haven't really deserved it. That's--" 

He shrugged. That was different from the way things had been between him and his Andrew. There were a lot of reasons for that, but mostly, he thought, that he hadn't met _this_ Andrew until Andrew had found his footing. He'd decided to become one of the good guys, he'd found a way he could actually contribute to the Council--and Alex, instead, was a mess without any real purpose in life at the moment, except to not make things worse wherever he found himself.

"That's a lot," he said, finally, because he didn't know if he could say any of the rest. Maybe, if a miracle happened and he got to stay, he'd figure out a way, but chances were really good that he wouldn't have to worry about that.

"It's nothing," Andrew said. "A personally-guided tour of the landmarks of London, that's a lot." And then, before Alex could say anything, he adopted an unnaturally-chirpy tone of voice and said, "If you look to your left, you will see--" He looked to his left, shrugging a little. "--An exotic foreign restaurant, emblematic of the thriving multicultural nature of the city."

"It's a McDonald's," Alex said, but Andrew pretended to take no notice.

"While across the street, you will see typical Londoners, dressed in traditional local costume--" Alex looked; yep, people wearing jeans, suits, and everything in between. "--performing the ceremony known as 'queuing for the bus.' The purpose of this activity is unknown, but experts believe it may serve some sort of ritual purpose."

Alex had to laugh; Andrew sounded so much like some of the vaguer reports in the Council archives that it had to be intentional.

"And we're walking," Andrew said, taking a few steps backward and reminding Alex now of museum guides on school field trips.

He might not like the way this day was probably going to end, but he was going to enjoy this part of it, at least.

****

Giles sighed, polishing the lenses of his glasses one final time before putting them back on and looking at the clock. "I think that in this case, we can't assume that no news is good news."

Alex swallowed hard and nodded. It had just passed seven o'clock, and they hadn't heard from either Willow or Preston. That was the end of their forty-eight hours, so it looked like Alex had been right: a miracle wasn't happening. "You should probably call Willow, see if she's got any last-minute notes to add."

There was a flash drive with every detail of the research she and Preston had been doing tucked in his backpack, secured in a waterproof bag; a second waterproof bag contained a hard copy of Willow's notes--not quite as complete, but in case the technology in the next dimension wasn't compatible, it would give them something to start from. But she'd handed them over to Giles early that afternoon, and Willow might have some more information she'd found in the last several hours.

"I will," Giles said. "But first, we should let Willow's backup team know we're going to need them to open a portal for you." He picked up the phone, turning his chair around a little as he began to speak.

"I guess this is it," Alex said, looking at Xander and Andrew. "Tell everybody else thanks from me, will you? I mean, Willow might show up herself to say goodbye, but Buffy and Dawn, especially? And Lambert and Preston. Even Mackenzie. You guys tried." He made himself smile at both of them. "And I'm glad your dimension is safe from what happened to mine."

"You know what you need to do, right?" Xander said, and Alex nodded.

"Get through the portal, find that dimension's Willow if I can, or failing that, the Council." Or the closest possible thing; he could always find himself in a dimension where the First, or some other threat, had wiped the Council out. "Give her the notes, tell her what's going on, get her to pick up from where this Willow left off."

"She included the details of the portal spell in the notes, so you won't have to re-create that this time. If she can't get things stabilized within a few weeks, she can send you through another portal to try again, until you find a dimension where it's safe for you to stay permanently."

Alex nodded. "Hopefully this next one will be it, but if not, at least I know the drill now."

Giles was done with his call, and he stood up from behind his desk. "They'll be waiting for us in the main conference room," he said. "Andrew, if you'll call Willow and ask about any updates to her notes? And we should go," he said, looking at Andrew and Xander.

"Give us a minute, Rupert?" Xander said. "You and Andrew go on ahead. Alex and I need a bro moment."

Alex made a face at him. "A bro moment?"

"Well, you are my brother. Or my me from another dimension, which is basically the same thing." Giles and Andrew both left the room then, and Xander took a deep breath. "You're the closest thing I've ever had to family I really liked. Well, Uncle Rory, but you've never asked me for bail money."

So that had happened in this dimension, too. "Same here," Alex said. It wouldn't be hard to start thinking of Xander as actually being his brother, for that matter. It was the easiest way to think about their relationship. "And you've been a pretty good brother, at that. Or at least, you were up until the words 'bro moment' came out of your mouth."

Xander nodded; he took a couple of steps forward until he could put his hand on Alex's shoulder. "Take care of yourself," he said. "Don't be as dumb in that dimension as you were here."

"I'm less screwed up than I was when I got here," he pointed out. Still pretty damn screwed up. You couldn't go through what he had without being screwed up--hell, if his pre-apocalypse self was anything to go by, Xander was pretty screwed up, himself--but better, anyway.

"Yeah, I know." Xander smiled. "So maybe don't wait until the last minute to give Andrew a chance, next time."

"How about I at least wait until I find out whether or not I'm going to be able to stay there? Unless you're suggesting that I jump from dimension to dimension, taking Andrew's virginity in all of them."

"That sounds like the idea for a series of dirty books," Xander said. "So, okay, wait until you find somewhere you can stay. But then--finding somebody else doesn't mean your Andrew doesn't count. We both know that. We've both lived through that."

It wasn't quite the same; it was easier to think of Andrew--or Giles, he supposed--as not being a replacement for Anya than it was to think of Andrew not being a replacement for Andrew. And now he'd be comparing this new guy to both the Andrews he'd known and--not loved, not this one, at least not yet, but cared about.

"Yeah, I'll remember. Or maybe I'll just write those dirty books. When I find a dimension I can stay in, maybe I can sell them and make a fortune." He grinned at Xander. "Come on. We should probably get going."

The main conference room was only down at the other end of the hall, so he was there too soon. He didn't _want_ to go, but the only thing he had a choice about was whether he went with at least a little dignity or whether they threw him through the portal, kicking and screaming. 

Alex hadn't always been the most dignified of guys, but he had enough pride to want to avoid that second option. And besides, he did want to do the right thing. He just didn't have to like it.

To his surprise, Andrew was waiting outside. "Go on in," he told Xander. "They're waiting for you. I'm still trying to get hold of Willow to find out if she has any more data to send along, and..." He looked at Alex. "Do you have a minute?"

"If we're waiting for Willow, then I guess I do," he said. "It's not like they can start without me."

Xander nodded and went through the door. Once it was closed again, Alex looked at Andrew. "So?"

"So," Andrew said quietly, "I just wanted to let you know that I'm really glad I met you, Alex Harris."

"Same here," Alex admitted. "If I didn't have to leave--"

Andrew sighed. "I've been saying that to myself for days. But you do, don't you? All the wishing in the world isn't going to make it come out differently."

Alex smiled. A willingness to face reality hadn't ever been one of Andrew's defining traits, but it looked like this Andrew had grown up, the same way that the one Alex had known had. "No, it's not."

"But if you didn't have to leave," Andrew said, "this wouldn't be me saying goodbye." He leaned in and kissed Alex, quickly and softly, and then looked down at the floor.

"No," Alex said. "If I didn't have to leave, I wouldn't want that to be goodbye, either." He didn't know what else to say, so he reached for the doorknob. "I'm sorry it has to be," he said, and went into the conference room.

Andrew didn't follow him, presumably because he thought his attempts to call Willow would disturb the three Watchers who were chalking some symbols on the floor. Willow hadn't done that when she'd sent him here, but he guessed "reverse engineering" the spell didn't mean they'd cast it the exact same way. Especially not given the fact that Willow was, at least in his universe, a lot more magically powerful than most people.

"Are you ready?" Giles asked him, and Alex made himself smile.

"Yeah. Andrew's just trying to get in touch with Willow, but if he hasn't managed it by the time they have the portal open, I guess I should just go. No point dragging things out forever." Especially not when every minute he spent here was making the instability in this dimension worse.

"I wish you luck," Giles said.

"Thanks. I have a feeling I'm going to need it." At least this time he'd know what was going on. He'd be prepared for it.

They watched the three Watchers--two women and a man, none of whom Alex knew--for a minute or two, maybe a little more. Alex hadn't realized he'd gotten absorbed in watching them work, but when the door banged open, he jumped.

"Willow says hold on," Andrew said. "That means you, Alex. Stay put, she said."

Giles frowned. "Is there something wrong?"

"No," Andrew said, grinning at Alex. "There's something right. She didn't answer when I called earlier because she and Mr. Preston were _sealing the instability_."

Alex blinked. "Really?"

"She might have at least let us know," Giles said. "A few minutes more, and Alex would have been gone already."

"She thought she'd be done before seven, but it took longer than they expected to cast all the spells they needed. She's on her way up here, so you can ask her for the details, but--" He looked at Alex, grinning. "You don't have to go anywhere if you don't want to."

Alex struggled out of his backpack and set it down on the floor. "I don't really want to go anywhere," he said.

Xander grinned. "You're just going to move into the conference room? That's going to get interesting when Rupert tries to hold meetings in here."

Alex swatted at him, though Xander dodged and he ended up just waving his hand in the air like a dork. "You know what I mean. But sure, I could move in here. I've lived in worse places." Like his parents' basement. The conference room at least didn't smell like mildew.

"You're going to have to leave," Andrew said. "There was something about owing me dinner if you stayed?"

"Why don't we wait for Willow," Giles suggested, "and we can all celebrate? She stopped the instability without having to send Alex away to do it; it's not often we get an unqualified victory."

"Um," Alex said, looking over at Andrew and hoping he was guessing right, that Andrew was trying to hide his disappointment at that. He wasn't sure how he was going to bring this up, but fortunately, Xander was a lot more perceptive than Alex thought he was himself, or maybe it was just because he and Alex were so similar.

"Not tonight," Xander said. "Tonight, we wait and hear what Willow and Preston have to say, and then we all go home--or wherever. And we'll call Buffy and Dawn, see if they can get back here this weekend. We'll celebrate then."

"It might be nice," Andrew said, "to do something for everybody who helped on this project. It got pretty intense for a while. Maybe a catered lunch on Friday? I'll set it up tomorrow," he added to Giles. "All you'll have to do is sign the purchase orders. But I agree with Xander, tonight we should go home."

"And I want to talk to you," Alex said to Giles. "I know I said I wanted a field assignment, but is there anything closer to London? I'd kind of like to stick around for a while." This time, he had no doubt about his ability to read Andrew's face; he was definitely pleased by that.

He was getting a second chance at everything. It didn't mean, he realized now, that his old life, his old friends, _Andrew_ , meant any less.

But he'd fought hard to stay alive, back then--and some of his friends, like Willow, had sacrificed everything to help him stay that way, to get him here where he'd have a chance, even if they hadn't been able to make it through the portal themselves.

And if that was going to mean anything, he decided, he was going to have to keep living. Here, with these people, who he already knew could be his friends--his family--if he gave them a chance. 

Here, where he could see what taking another path would have led him to; he didn't regret the choices he'd made--it was easy to say that if he'd gone the same route Xander had, his world might have been spared the apocalypse, but he really couldn't know that. Maybe he and his Giles still wouldn't have had the right conversation--but at least he could know that the other decision would have worked out okay, too.

And maybe even here, with a chance to be happy again, with a guy who understood him and was willing to let Alex work through things in his own time.

He was pretty sure Andrew-- _both_ Andrews--would approve.

****


End file.
